Penn State Live - Penn State ranks No. 1 in management research citations

Penn State ranks No. 1 in management research citations

Friday, January 28, 2011

University Park, Pa. – From 2005 to 2009, research by faculty members in the Department of Management and Organization at the Penn State Smeal College of Business was cited at a higher rate than that of any other management faculty in the country, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

The business research firm calculated the number of citations management research papers have received in management journals over the five-year period, and Penn State topped the list with an average of 6.45 citations per paper. Penn State thus ranks No. 1 on Thomson Reuters' list of high-impact U.S. institutions for management research.

"This latest acknowledgment of the quality of our management faculty is particularly meaningful because it more accurately measures the impact our faculty members are making in the field," said James B. Thomas, the John and Becky Surma Dean of Smeal, who is also a professor of management. "Although our management faculty isn't the largest among the top business schools, this accolade is further proof that it is among the best, making a disproportionately large imprint on the field of management."

Academic research rankings typically take into account only productivity, measuring the number of papers published in the top academic journals. The Thomson Reuters ranking, however, more accurately assesses the impact of the research by measuring how often work by Smeal faculty is cited in other studies.

Smeal's Department of Management and Organization offers programs and degrees at the undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and executive education levels, and is consistently ranked highly in both education and research in national media rankings. The department also ranks in the top 10 in academic research rankings put out by the University of Texas at Dallas and a joint report from Texas A&M University and the University of Florida.