Examining the Evolution of the Field of Public Administration through a Bibliometric Analysis of Public Administration Review

• Author: Cassidy R. Sugimoto,Chaoqun Ni,Alice Robbin
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12737
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017

496 Public Administration Review • July | August 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 4, pp. 496–509. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12737.

Alice Robbin is associate professor in

the School of Informatics and Computing

at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her

current research examines failures of

interorganizational networks, information

and communication technology innovation

in complex organizations, and digital divide

and social inclusion.

E-mail: arobbin@indiana.edu

Cassidy R. Sugimoto is associate

professor in the School of Informatics

and Computing at Indiana University,

Bloomington. Her research is in the

domain of scholarly communication and

scientometrics. She currently serves as

president of the International Society for

Scientometrics and Informetrics and is

past president of the Bloomington Faculty

Council.

E-mail: sugimoto@indiana.edu

Chaoqun Ni is assistant professor in the

School of Library and Information Science

at Simmons College. She studies scholarly

communication in the scientific workforce

to provide implications for decision making

on resource allocation. Her publications

have appeared in journals and conferences

of multiple areas: library and information

science, computer science, science policy,

scientometrics, and bibliometrics.

E-mail: chaoqun.ni@simmons.edu

Abstract : In 2015, Public Administration Review celebrated its 75th year of publication. For this milestone, the

PAR Editorial Board selected the 75 most influential articles in the history of the journal and invited scholars to

“revisit a selection of these articles” in order “to take stock of what these articles meant for the field.” Bibliometrics

offers a complementary view of the history of a discipline and the evolution of its research and practice agendas through

an analysis of its published literature. This article examines the changes over time in PAR from 1940 through 2013

in authorship: contributions, impact, gender composition, institutional and national affiliation, profession as scholar

or practitioner, collaboration networks, and the status of the 75 influential articles. Through an extensive quantitative

analysis of scholarly production, this article demonstrates PAR ’s centrality to the discipline of public administration

and its bridging role between public administration and political science.

I t is not uncommon for emergent or interdisciplinary

fields to seek signals to establish their identity

(Adams et al. 2014 ). The field of public

administration is no stranger to this search for identity,

having a robust literature with the objective to depict

a common disciplinary narrative (see, e.g., Houston

and Delevan 1990 ; Lan and Anders 2000 ; Meier 2015 ;

Miller and Jaja 2005 ; Riccucci 2010 ; Wright 2011 ;

Zalmanovitch 2014 ). One common marker of the

development of a discipline or a field is a journal, which

signals the cohesion of authors and topics around a

novel area of inquiry (Sugimoto and Weingart 2015 ).

By examining the evolution of key journals in the field,

we can begin to weave a disciplinary history.

In this instance, we employ scientometric methods

to examine the trajectory of the field of public

administration through an analysis of articles

published in Public Administration Review ( PA R )

from its inception in 1940 through 2013. PAR is

particularly well suited for this analysis given its

historical importance as one of the oldest of the 47

public administration journals indexed in Web of

Science (WoS) and its quality. PAR, which celebrated

75 years of publication in 2015 (Perry 2015 ), has

been continuously highly ranked from the perspective

of both prestige and citation rankings (Colson 1990 ;

Forrester and Watson 1994 ; Van de Walle and Van

Delft 2015).

Scientometrics provides a particularly useful lens

for exploring the history of the field through the

pages of PAR. Scientometrics is an area of research

that studies scholarly information through a

quantitative lens, often relying on bibliographic

information from published research. Bibliometrics

is a set of methods used within scientometrics

that focuses on this bibliographic information.

While scientometrics is often associated with the

evaluative components (e.g., the construction and

use of various bibliometric indicators such as the

Journal Impact Factor or the h-index), there is also

an arm of scientometrics devoted to understanding

the structural dimensions of science. By taking a

scientometric approach to studying a discipline,

changes over time can be discerned in terms of

those who practice in the discipline, the relationship

among fields, and the topics that have been studied.

Chaoqun Ni

Simmons College

Cassidy R. Sugimoto

Alice Robbin

Indiana University, Bloomington

Examining the Evolution of the Field of Public

Administration through a Bibliometric Analysis of

PublicAdministration Review

Editor’s Note: In 2014, I encouraged Chaoqun Ni, Cassidy Sugimoto and Alice Robbin to develop a

bibliometric analysis of PAR’s  rst 75 years. We collectively believed the research and peer review could

be completed prior to the end of PAR’s 75th anniversary in 2015. Although the research and review

took much longer than anticipated, I am pleased to bring this sweeping analysis of PAR’s history to our

readers. It o ers useful insights about the evolution of the  eld and PAR’s role in it. Commentaries from

two prominent scholars, Fran Berry and Don Moynihan, follow the article to provide further context and

perspective.

JLP