Quality of graduate productivity in sociology as measured by the citation index: A longitudinal overview

The discipline of sociology generally has not analyzed the differential productivity among graduates of doctoral programs. When such productivity has been assessed, quantity rather than quality of publications has been the basis for comparisons. The present study uses data compiled from the Social Science Citation Index to measure the differential contributions to sociology by the graduates of a number of long established and prestigious doctoral programs in the field. Based on these data, a number of interesting patterns emerge concerning the quality of graduates' productivity, both across departments and within various alumni cohorts of the same department.No special merit should be attached to the order of names. The authors contributed equally to this article.