Scheduled for Research Consortium Free Communication: Higher Education Issues in Sports Administration and Management, Friday, March 16, 2007, 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM, Convention Center: 328


Single Versus Multiple Authorship in Sport Management Research

Michael Smucker, University of Tampa, Tampa, FL and Heidi Grappendorf, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

One of the most important aspects of a faculty member's reward and recognition system is securing tenure and promotion. A major criteria use to evaluate candidates for tenure and promotion, especially at research intensive universities, is their number of publications. One strategy that has caught the attention of academicians is the growing number working in collaborative groups or teams (Creamer, 2005). The rates of collaboration and multiple-authorship are growing in almost all academic fields as many academicians are conducting a majority of their research with colleagues (Austin, 2001; Austin & Baldwin, 1992; Baldwin & Austin, 1995; Endersby, 1996; Mendenhall & Higbee, 1982). Faculty collaboration is a joint endeavor which involves like goals, cooperative efforts, and outcomes in which collaborators can share the responsibilities, as well as the benefits (Austin & Baldwin, 1992). Gelman and Gibelman (1999) noted that not only has the rate of collaboration increased, but that collaboration has expanded to include three, four, five, and sometimes more authors on research publications and presentations. Not only did Gelman and Gibelman (1999) note this phenomena, they also noted a tendency to brake down research into smaller and smaller parts to get more publications from data. The trend of multiple authored papers does not appear to be one to slow anytime soon, as faculty continue to deal with competing for limited resources, and the “publish or perish” mentality (Crase & Rosato, 1992; Sever, 2005). As this “publish or perish” mentality continues to be upheld in higher education, faculty members have pursued various strategies to increase their success rate of publishing in refereed journals. The purpose of this study was to examine single versus multiple authorship differences in sport management faculty research utilizing content analysis methodology. This study examined accepted presentations from the North American Society of Sport Management (NASSM) conference and five refereed sport management journals from 2001-2005. Results indicated that of journal articles (N = 477), 39 % (n = 187) were single authored, while 61% (n = 290) were multiple authored. Of the conference presentations (N = 763), 32% were single authored, while 68% (n = 516) were multiple authored. Additionally, 36% (n = 277) of conference presentations were presented by two authors. Other results will be discussed, along with implications and future research.
Keyword(s): professional preparation, sport management

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