Citation Impact Scores of Top African American Scholars in Social Work Schools: The Story Behind the Data

U.S. tenure-track positions have steadily declined over the past 30 years and emphasis on research productivity has escalated. To achieve higher research and scholarship goals, the literature revealed that African American scholars have additional issues to overcome beyond the usual hurdles and challenges confronting other faculty. This study explored current research productivity by examining citation impact scores (h-indices) collected from Publish or Perish of African American scholars in top 25 ranked schools of social work cited in the 2012 U.S. News and World Report. The resultant sample consisted of N = 14 scholars with h-index scores of 9 and higher. Results revealed nonsignificant statistical differences between specified subgroupings, and 80% of these scholars overexceeded their respective school mean h-index scores. Future research calls for a more comprehensive knowledge of faculty research and scholarship activities overall, including unique subgroups of Social Work scholars such as African Americans.