Twenty-six years of operations management research (1985–2010): authorship patterns and research constituents in eleven top rated journals

Abstract

This paper investigates the research contributions over a 26-year time frame (1985–2010) of academic institutions and individual authors to the field of operations management (OM). We use two measures, shared articles and distributed articles, to assess the research productivity of institutions as well as individual researchers. Further we assess the contribution of institutions based on affiliated author research as well as the research of their PhD graduates. In order to accomplish this, we utilise the published OM research articles in 11 top-rated and well-known academic journals over the time period from 1985 to 2010. In addition to the research, contributions of academic institutions and individual authors, we look at several bibliometric statistics related to this body of published research. These measures indicate that the research constituency is growing as evidenced by increasing numbers of researchers and institutions represented. Lastly, the collaboration between researchers appears to be increasing as evidenced by an increasing percentage of articles with three or more authors and the average number of authors per article published.