Most Published Authors in Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology During the 1990s

Chockalingam Viswesvaran
Florida International University

As the 1990s have come to a close, it is perhaps a good time to take stock of accomplishments. Our interest was in identifying the most published authors of the decade in the field of I-O psychology. Who are the individuals highest in terms of their research productivity? We focused on the number of publications in two main journals of our field: Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP) and Personnel Psychology (PP). Some researchers (e.g., Howard, Maxwell, Berra, & Sternitzke, 1985; Levine, 1990) have argued that the number of publications in JAP provides a useful index of individual research productivity. Given that Personnel Psychology is another prominent I-O psychology journal, with impact ratings (i.e., citation records) and article acceptance rates on par with JAP, we decided to use number of publications in PP along with number of publications in JAP as our index of individual research productivity. Levine (1990) summarized individual research productivity for 1980s, based on number of publications in JAP. By focusing our analyses on JAP and PP, we hope to have some continuity with his work.

We constructed a database of individuals who have published an article in either JAP or PP during the 1990s. We recorded a frequency count of the number of articles each author published during the decade. When there were multiple authors of an article, we gave a score to each co-author. That is, individuals received a score for both single authored and co-authored articles. Although this might overestimate the contributions of some individuals and underestimate the contributions for others, this scoring scheme should serve as a rough index of individual productivity in the field. Further, this scoring algorithm is identical to that used by Levine (1990) to assess individual research productivity (also published in TIP). When doing the frequency count, we did not distinguish between regular articles, research reports, or monographs.

Overall, there were 1,690 authors who published in JAP and PP during the 1990s. The mean number of publications per author was 1.72 (SD = 1.74). However, the frequency of publications was extremely skewed in that a few researchers published a great many articles, while many authors published a single article. We were able to identify 523 (30.9%) of the authors as female and 1,037 (61.4%) of the authors as male. For 130 authors (7.7%), no gender information was available. On average, women published 1.44 (SD = 1.18) papers, whereas men published 1.93 (SD = 2.01) papers. The standardized mean difference in number of papers published by men and women was .28, favoring men. Note that the variability in number of papers produced by women was 58.44% of the variability of papers produced by men. That is, although on average men published more in these journals, men were much more variable than women in the number of articles they published. The substantial lower variability of the female distribution also means that few females make it to the most-published-authors echelon in I-O psychology. Table 1 provides the frequency distribution of publications.

Table 1

Distributions of Author Productivity in Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology during 1990s.

All authors (N = 1,690)			Women (N = 523)		Men (N = 1,037)
Total # of Pubs per Author	Frequency	%	Womens Frequency	%  of Women	Mens Frequency	% of Men
1	1,182	69.9	400	76.5	668	64.4
2	263	15.6	76	14.5	175	16.9
3	96	5.7	23	4.4	71	6.8
4	52	3.1	11	2.1	40	3.9
5	31	1.8	4	.8	27	2.6
6	24	1.4	4	.8	19	1.8
7	11	.7	2	.4	9	.9
8	13	.8	2	.4	11	1.1
9	2	.1	--	--	2	.2
10	6	.4	--	--	6	.6
11	1	.1	--	--	1	.1
12	1	.1	--	--	1	.1
13	2	.1	--	--	2	.2
15	1	.1	--	--	1	.1
16	2	.1	1	.2	1	.1
18	1	.1	--	--	1	.1
19	1	.1	--	--	1	.1
20	1	.1	--	--	1	.1

Note: For 130 authors, no gender information could be obtained. For all authors who published 4 or more papers, gender information was available.

Almost 70% (n = 1,182) of the authors published only one article. Another 15.6% (n = 263) authored two articles in the decade of the 1990s. Less than 5% of authors published more than five articles. For women, only 1.8% (n = 9) authored more than five articles. The corresponding number for men was 5.5% (n = 56). There was only 1 woman and 9 men who published more than 10 articles in JAP and/or PP (an average of one article per year!).

Table 2 lists the individuals who have published five or more articles in JAP and PP during the 1990s.


Table 2

Most Published Authors in Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology during the 1990s: The Top 100^a

Absolute Rank	Category Rank	Author Name	Current Affiliation	Total # of Pubs.
1	1	Judge, Timothy A. (1990)	University of Iowa	20
2	2	Sackett, Paul (1979)	University of Minnesota	19
3	3	Schmitt, Neal (1972)	Michigan State University	18
4.5	4	Ryan, Ann Marie (1987)	Michigan State University	16
4.5	4	Schmidt, Frank L. (1970)	University of Iowa	16
7	5	Barrick, Murray R. (1988)	Michigan State University	13
7	5	Campion, Michael A. (1982)	Purdue University	13
7	5	Mount, Michael K. (1977)	University of Iowa	13
9	6	Salas, Eduardo (1984)	University of Central Florida	12
10	7	Bretz, Jr., Robert D. (1988)	University of Notre Dame	11
13.5	8	Hollenbeck, John R. (1984)	Michigan State University	10
13.5	8	Hunter, John E. (1964)	Michigan State University	10
13.5	8	Mathieu, John E. (1985)	University of Connecticut	10
13.5	8	Motowidlo, Stephan (1976)	University of Florida	10
13.5	8	Murphy, Kevin R. (1979)	Colorado State University	10
13.5	8	Schmit, Mark J. (1994)	Personnel Decisions International	10
17.5	9	Chan, David (1998)	National University of Singapore	9
17.5	9	Maurer, Todd (1990)	Georgia Institute of Technology	9
25	10	Arvey, Richard D. (1971)	University of Minnesota	8
25	10	Barling, Julian (1979)	Queens University	8
25	10	Burke, Michael J. (1982)	Tulane University	8
25	10	Drasgow, Fritz (1978)	University of Illinois	8
25	10	Eden, Dov (1970)	Tel-Aviv University	8
25	10	Ganster, Daniel C. (1978)	University of Arkansas	8
25	10	George, Jennifer M. (1987)	Rice University	8
25	10	Harrison, David A (1988)	University of Texas-Arlington	8
25	10	Ilgen, Daniel R. (1969)	Michigan State University	8
25	10	Ones, Deniz S. (1993)	University of Minnesota	8
25	10	Quinones, Miguel A. (1993)	Rice University	8
25	10	Raju, Nambury S. (1974)	Illinois Institute of Technology	8
25	10	Viswesvaran, Chockalingam (1993)	Florida International University	8
37	11	Bobko, Philip (1976)	Gettysburg College	7
37	11	Borman, Walter C. (1972)	University of South Florida	7
37	11	Klaas, Brian S. (1987)	University of South Carolina	7
37	11	Locke, Edwin A. (1964)	University of Maryland	7
37	11	Meyer, John P. (1978)	University of Western Ontario	7
37	11	Ployhart, Robert E. (1999) </