KU News Release

KU rates in top 10 for journal publishing productivity, according to new study

LAWRENCE — A new study shows that the University of Kansas ranks in the top 10 for the number of faculty who have published articles in a pair of prestigious academic journals.

KU is tied for eighth with Stanford University for faculty who have had articles published in the Review of Higher Education and the Journal of Higher Education, leading publications in the field of higher education studies.

Professors John R. Rachal, Kyna Shelley and William W.V. David of the University of Southern Mississippi examined publications in the two journals from 1995 to 2005. Productivity in publishing journal articles is a long-standing and commonly used measure of an academic program’s quality.

“While books, presentations and grants are also useful measures of research activity, the esteemed place of the refereed academic journal is perhaps sine qua non (essential condition) of scholarship, representing a discipline’s most current thought, its newest findings and critique of its established paradigms,” the study’s authors wrote.

The University of California-Los Angeles ranked first in the study. The University of Missouri was the only other Big 12 school in the rankings, at 29th.

Lisa Wolf-Wendel, professor of education leadership and policy studies and one of the authors who has published in the two journals, said KU’s ranking is especially impressive considering the small size of its faculty who study higher education.

“What is amazing about these statistics is that we have a much smaller faculty than many other programs,” Wolf-Wendel said. “Many of the universities in these listings have double our faculty numbers or more and also have full-time doctoral students.”

KU’s primary authors in the two journals during the studied periods were Susan Twombly, professor and chair of education leadership and policy studies; former professor Christopher Morphew; and Wolf-Wendel. Suzanne Rice, associate professor of curriculum and teaching; Bruce Baker, former associate professor of education leadership and policy studies; and several graduate students were co-authors on KU’s articles published in the two journals.

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