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Higher education research 2000–2010:changing journal publication patternsMalcolm Tight aa Department of Educational Research , Lancaster University ,Lancaster , UKPublished online: 09 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Malcolm Tight (2012) Higher education research 2000–2010: changingjournal publication patterns, Higher Education Research & Development, 31:5, 723-740, DOI:10.1080/07294360.2012.692361

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Higher education research 2000–2010: changing journalpublication patterns

Malcolm Tight*

Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

The articles published in15 specialist academic journals– based inAustralasia,Europeand North America – focusing on higher education in the years 2010 (n = 567) and2000 (n = 388) are analysed. The analysis focuses on: the themes and issuesaddressed in the articles published, the methods and methodologies used, theoreticalengagement, the level of analysis, and the sex, location and department of theauthors. Three main trends are identified over the period 2000–2010: a strikingincrease in the volume of high quality higher education research being published(outside North America), the increasingly international orientation of the leadinghigher education research journals (outside North America), and the growing role ofwomen as higher education researchers.

Keywords: academic journals; higher education; publication; research

Introduction

This article analyzes the articles published in 15 selected specialist academic journalsthat focus on higher education during the years 2000 and 2010. It forms part of a con-tinuing project to map the contemporary state of higher education research worldwide(Tight, 2003, 2012), aiming to illustrate how this field of research has developed so farduring the twenty-first century. After discussing and justifying the selection of journalsmade, the article focuses successively on: the themes and issues addressed in thearticles published, the methods and methodologies used, the relationship betweenthemes and issues and methods and methodologies, theoretical and methodologicalengagement, the level of analysis, and the location, sex and department of theauthors. Throughout, comparisons are drawn between the patterns apparent in 2010and those for the year 2000. While this may seem a relatively short period toexamine, the analysis indicates that there have been significant changes during it.The article does not take a theoretical approach, focusing instead on providing adetailed description and analysis of the patterns found.

Selection of journals for analysis

There are hundreds of journals published every year in the English language (to which Ihave limited myself), which contain articles dealing with higher education. For theanalysis presented in this article, I have chosen to concentrate solely on selected aca-demic journals that focus exclusively on higher education. I have done this for three

ISSN 0729-4360 print/ISSN 1469-8366 online© 2012 HERDSAhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2012.692361http://www.tandfonline.com

*Email: m.tight@lancaster.ac.uk

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main reasons. First, such articles are peer-reviewed, which tends to ensure that they areof a certain minimum quality. Second, these articles are also normally research-based –that is, they involve some empirical data collection and analysis and/or critical reflec-tion related to the issues addressed. Third, analysing only specialist higher educationjournals keeps the analysis more focused.

This does mean, of course, that other types of journals and articles have been left outof the analysis. These include professional or popular journals, less well-establishedacademic journals, journals that are only published online, discipline-specific highereducation journals, and academic journals that do not focus specifically on higher edu-cation but that regularly or occasionally publish articles on higher education. While theexclusion of these journals and articles from the analysis is regrettable, it was essentialto keep the study within reasonable bounds. Conversely, I would argue that academicjournals that focus on higher education contain the core of contemporary higher edu-cation research.

These exclusions, together with the focus on English language publications, still leftat least 30 specialist higher education academic journals for possible analysis (forexample, Bassett & Rumbley, 2006). From this broader group, I then selected 15 jour-nals for detailed analysis, aiming to include the ones that are of the highest status.While this is, of course, contestable, factors that I took account of in making thisselection included listing in the ISI Web of Knowledge citation reports (http://wok.mimas.ac.uk), and the assessments made by the Australian Research Council (sinceabandoned: http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_journal_list.htm#1) and the EuropeanScience Foundation (http://www.esf,org/research-areas/humanities/erih-european-reference-index-for-the-humanities/erih-foreword.html).

The 15 journals selected include ones edited and/or published in Australasia, theUK, the rest of Europe and North America:

. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education (AEHE)

. Higher Education (HE)

. Higher Education Management & Policy (HEMP)

. Higher Education Policy (HEP)

. Higher Education Quarterly (HEQ)

. Higher Education Research & Development (HERD)

. Innovative Higher Education (IHE)

. Journal of College Student Development (JCSD)

. Journal of Higher Education (JHE)

. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management (JHEPM)

. Research in Higher Education (ResHE)

. Review of Higher Education (RevHE)

. Studies in Higher Education (SHE)

. Teaching in Higher Education (THE)

. Tertiary Education and Management (TEAM)

These 15 journals published a total of 388 refereed articles during the year 2000 and567 in 2010. These form the subject of the analysis in the remainder of this article.Editorials, book reviews, review articles and symposia have been excluded fromconsideration.

I am not, of course, the first person to have analysed higher education journals. Suchanalyses are not infrequently provided by the editors of the journals themselves

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(e.g. Dobson, 2009; Huisman, 2008; Ross, 1992; Tight, 2011). Other researchers havealso focused on what has been published in specific journals (e.g. Volkwein, Carbone,& Volkwein, 1988) or on a limited range of journals (e.g. Budd & Magnusson, 2010;Donaldson & Townsend, 2007; Haggis, 2009; Hart & Metcalfe, 2010). To my knowl-edge, however, the analyses made here are the most comprehensive currently available.

The longest established journal of the 15, JHE, reached its 81st volume in the year2010, having been established in 1930. The newest of the journals, THE, reached its15th volume in that year, having started publication in 1996. On average, the 15 journalshad produced 39 volumes by the end of 2000. In terms of their scale of activity, at oneextreme,HE published 2 complete volumes and 12 issues in 2010, whileHEMP only pro-duced 3 issues. The number of articles published displays a similar variation, ranging fromaminimumof 18, in the case ofRevHE, to amaximumof85 in the case ofHE (seeTable 1).

As Table 1 shows, the last 10 years has been a period of variable growth for the 15journals. While 7 published the same number of issues in 2010 as they had in 2000, theother 8 increased their frequency of publication. The number of articles publishedincreased by nearly half, 46%, on average over the 10 years. Of the journals, 3– HERD, JHEPM and SHE – more than doubled their output over the period, whileanother 2 – AEHE and HE – nearly doubled their output. As all 5 of these journalsare edited from either Australia or the UK, this suggests that much of the recentgrowth in higher education journals (and research) has been taking place outside ofNorth America, where the market was already well developed in 2000.

Themes and issues

Table 2 categorises the 567 articles published in the 15 journals in 2010 in terms ofeight themes or issues: teaching and learning, course design, the student experience,

Table 1. Changes in journal publication rates, 2000–2010.

JournalEditorial

location 2010Number of issues

2010 (2000)Number of articles

2010 (2000)% Increase in articles

2000–2010

AEHE UK 7 (6) 58 (30) +93HE Australia 12 (8) 85 (46) +85HEMP Australia 3 (3) 20 (24) −17HEP UK 4 (4) 27 (21) +29HEQ UK 4 (4) 22 (21) +5HERD Australia 6 (3) 49 (20) +145IHE USA 5 (4) 25 (17) +47JCSD USA 6 (6) 33 (42) −27JHE USA 6 (6) 28 (27) +4JHEPM Australia 5 (2) 40 (14) +186ResHE USA 8 (6) 37 (33) +12RevHE USA 4 (4) 18 (19) −5SHE UK 8 (3) 56 (21) +167THE UK 6 (4) 49 (33) +48TEAM Norway 4 (4) 20 (20) 0Total 88 (67) 567 (388) +46

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Table 2. Journal articles published in 2010 by themes or issues.

JournalTeaching/learning

Coursedesign

Studentexperience Quality

Systempolicy

Institutionalmanagement

Academicwork

Knowledge andresearch Total

AEHE 47 11 58HE 6 9 26 6 11 6 14 7 85HEMP 3 4 3 5 3 2 20HEP 4 5 3 10 1 3 1 27HEQ 7 2 1 4 3 5 22HERD 28 8 2 2 3 6 49IHE 1 10 1 5 2 5 1 25JCSD 3 28 1 1 33JHE 4 10 3 6 3 2 28JHEPM 1 7 3 5 3 11 10 40ResHE 3 5 16 1 5 4 2 1 37RevHE 1 3 8 3 1 2 18SHE 7 12 23 2 3 1 7 1 56THE 2 33 4 2 8 49TEAM 1 2 3 2 10 2 20Total 21 176 136 41 54 53 71 15 567

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quality, system policy, institutional management, academic work, knowledge andresearch.

It is clear that two of the eight themes or issues identified – course design and thestudent experience – dominate, each accounting for well over 100 articles, and togethermaking up over half, 55%, of those under review. Academic work (13% of articles),system policy (10%), institutional management (9%) and quality (7%) were alsopopular themes or issues for research. Teaching/learning and knowledge and research,by comparison, appear to be the least often researched or most specialised areas ofinterest.

There are significant differences in the extent to which the 15 journals publishedarticles on each of the themes. Two main, if somewhat contradictory, conclusionsmay be drawn. First – but bearing in mind the caveat that the sample is for one yearonly – some journals do appear to be more generic in their publication strategy thanothers. Thus, three of the journals – HE, ResHE and SHE – published at least onearticle on each of the eight key themes identified during 2010. Three other journals –HEP, IHE, JHEPM – published articles on seven of the themes and a further six(HEMP, HEQ, HERD, JHE, RevHE and TEAM) had published articles on six ofthem. In some cases, this is not quite what might be expected from their titles, oreven their editorial policies (where stated), but suggests that many higher educationjournals are open to publishing articles on most aspects of higher education.

Second, it seems clear that most of the 15 journals do, nevertheless, tend to havespecialist foci:

. For five of the journals, articles on the student experience constitute the largestproportion: JCSD (85% of articles), RevHE (44%), ResHE (43%), SHE (41%)and JHE (36%).

. For four, articles on course design led the way: AEHE (81%), THE (67%),HERD(57%) and IHE (40%).

. Two other journals focus on different specialist themes: TEAM on institutionalmanagement (50%) and HEP on system policy (37%).

This conclusion is largely confirmed if the same analysis is carried out on the 2000output of these 15 journals. In all but two cases, the journals then had a similarfocus and spread of article themes. The two exceptions were HEQ, which in 2000had a focus on system policy (48% of 21 articles), and SHE, which then publishedmore articles on course design (38% of 21 articles) than the student experience(only 10%).

Methods and methodologies

Table 3 categorises the 567 articles published in 2010 in terms of six methods ormethodologies: documentary analysis, interviews, surveys and multivariate analyses,conceptual analysis, phenomenography, and auto/biographical and observationalstudies.

Three method/ologies dominate –multivariate analyses (44% of articles), documen-tary analyses (26%) and interview-based studies (21%) – together accounting for thegreat majority (91%) of the total sample. This is not really surprising, as literaturereviews and policy analyses, questionnaire surveys, interviews and their analysis arethe basis of most social research. By contrast, biographical (4%) and conceptual

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(4%) analyses are much less common, while phenomenographical analyses (1%)are rare.

As in the case of themes and issues, individual journals vary in the extent to whichthey publish articles making use of particular method/ologies. As with the analysis inthe previous section, two sorts of conclusions may be drawn from this table.

First, and in contrast to the discussion of themes and issues, when we examine themethods or methodologies applied to research, there appear to be more similarities thandifferences between the 17 journals. Thus, only one journal, ResHE, did not publish atleast one article primarily using each of the three most popular method/ologies, andonly one, SHE, published articles using all of the six method/ologies identified. Fiveother journals – AEHE, HE, HERD, IHE and THE – published examples of five ofthe six method/ologies during the year in question.

Second, we may, nevertheless identify a number of groups of journals with parti-cular method/ological foci:

. There are five journals where the majority of the articles published adopted amultivariate approach to conducting research: ResHE (97%), JCSD (67%),RevHE (67%), HE (56%) and JHE (54%). Two other journals – AEHE (45%)and HEQ (45%) – had a near majority of articles taking a multivariate approach.It is significant that this group contains four of the five American journalsexamined.

. There are two journals that published mainly articles that took a documentaryapproach to conducting research: HEP (67%) and HEMP (60%). Three otherjournals – JHEPM (45%), TEAM (45%) and IHE (44%) – also nearly recordeda majority of articles employing this approach.

Table 3. Journal articles published in 2010 by method or methodology.

Journal Documentary Interviews Multivariate Conceptual Phenomenography Biography Total

AEHE 13 10 26 2 7 58

HE 19 16 48 1 1 85

HEMP 12 2 4 2 20

HEP 18 2 7 27

HEQ 9 3 10 22

HERD 15 17 12 1 4 49

IHE 11 4 5 2 3 25

JCSD 1 10 22 33

JHE 4 8 15 1 28

JHEPM 18 5 16 1 40

ResHE 1 36 37

RevHE 2 4 12 18

SHE 11 16 20 3 5 1 56

THE 7 19 7 10 6 49

TEAM 9 3 7 1 20

Total 150 119 247 21 6 24 567

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. The remaining three journals – HERD, SHE and THE – appear more open topublishing analyses from varied method/ological perspectives.

If we compare these patterns with those in 2000, in most cases the method/ological fociof the journals do not appear to have changed. In three cases, however, significantlydifferent patterns are apparent: HE was less focused on multivariate analyses in 2000(only 35% of 46 articles), IHE was less focused on documentary analyses (18% of17 articles) and RevHE was focused on interview-based (63% of 19 articles) ratherthan multivariate analyses.

These patterns appear somewhat starker if the method/ological differences are sim-plified to a dichotomy: that between qualitative and quantitative forms of research.Table 4 categorises the 567 articles published in 2010 in this way, with the minority(5% of the total) that could not be said to be either predominantly qualitative or predo-minantly quantitative placed in a ‘mixed’ category. Overall, there is a fairly even split,with 53% of the articles adopting a predominantly qualitative approach and 42% apredominantly quantitative approach.

The individual journals, however, mostly exhibit a preference for either qualitativeor quantitative approaches:

. For six journals – THE (86%), IHE (72%), HERD (71%), TEAM (70%), HEMP(65%) and SHE (61%) – qualitative articles make up the clear majority.

. For four journals (all American-based) – ResHE (97%), RevHE (67%), JCSD(64%) and JHE (61%) – quantitative articles dominate.

The remaining five journals – AEHE, HE, HEP, HEQ and JHEPM – are more balancedin these terms.

Table 4. Journal articles published in 2010 by underlying methodology.

Journal Qualitative Quantitative Mixed Total

AEHE 31 23 4 58HE 35 49 1 85HEMP 13 5 2 20HEP 16 8 3 27HEQ 11 9 2 22HERD 35 8 6 49IHE 18 6 1 25JCSD 11 21 1 33JHE 10 17 1 28JHEPM 22 17 1 40ResHE 36 1 37RevHE 6 12 18SHE 34 18 4 56THE 42 5 2 49TEAM 14 5 1 20Total 298 239 30 567

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In four cases, the corresponding patterns were somewhat different in 2000, and ineach of these cases the movement has been towards publishing more quantitativearticles. Thus, HE was dominated by qualitative articles in 2000 (61% of 46 articles),but quantitative articles were in the majority (58% of 85 articles) in 2010. For HEP, theemphasis on qualitative articles has also fallen (from 86% of 21 articles in 2000 to 59%of 27 articles in 2010) and a similar trend is evident for JHEPM (from 79% of 14articles in 2000 to 55% of 40 articles in 2010). In the fourth case, RevHE, the shiftappears to have been even more radical: while 89% of 19 articles were predominantlyqualitative in nature in 2000, in 2010 67% of 18 articles were quantitative.

Themes in relation to method/ologies

There are, not surprisingly, relationships between themes and method/ologies, thoughthey are by no means straightforward (see Table 5). There are examples in the sample of567 articles of the three most popular method/ologies – multivariate, documentary andinterview-based analyses – being applied to researching all of the themes or issuesidentified (with one exception: no documentary analyses of teaching and learningwere identified in 2010, though there were in 2000).

Multivariate analysis – which includes both straightforward questionnaire surveysand applications of complex techniques such as factor analysis and structural equationmodeling – is the most popular method for studying five of the themes identified: thestudent experience (92 articles, or 16% of the total sample), course design (60, 11%),academic work (27, 5%), quality (22, 4%) and teaching and learning (14, 2%).Documentary analysis is the most common method used for researching the otherthree themes: system policy (38 articles, 7%), institutional management (25, 4%) andknowledge and research (8, 1%), but is also widely used for examining coursedesign (42, 7%). Interview-based analyses are a key approach to researching coursedesign (43 articles, 8%), the student experience (33, 6%) and academic work (24, 4%).

The less popular method/ologies are not so widely applied. Biographical analyses –at least in the year in question – are most commonly applied in studies of course design,which is also the case for conceptual analysis. In the case of phenomenographicanalysis, there are few examples in the sample, but this technique has been appliedto three themes: teaching and learning, course design and academic work.

The relationships observed between themes and method/ologies were broadly thesame 10 years earlier. Multivariate analysis was again the most popular approach takenfor studying the student experience (59 of 388 articles, or 15% of the total), coursedesign (6%) and academic work (5%); while documentary analysis led the way for notonly system policy (10%) and institutional management (7%), but also quality (3%).Interviews were the most popular technique for exploring both teaching andlearning and knowledge and research, though in each case the numbers of articles weresmall. Most of the published conceptual analyses were again concerned with coursedesign, with biographical analyses split between course design and academic work.

Theoretical and methodological engagement

Examining journal articles in terms of their theoretical engagement is not straightfor-ward, for two main reasons. First, there is such a wide variety of theory in use inresearching higher education that it is very difficult to categorise in any simplefashion. Second, the level of theory in use and, in particular, the level of theoretical

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Table 5. Journal articles published in 2010 categorised by themes and methods.

Theme Documentary Interviews Multivariate Conceptual Phenomenography Biography Total

Teaching/learning 3 14 3 1 21Course design 42 43 60 13 2 16 176Student experience 8 33 92 2 1 136Quality 14 3 22 2 41System policy 38 3 12 1 54Institutional management 25 7 17 2 2 53Academic work 15 24 27 2 1 2 71Knowledge and research 8 3 3 1 15Totals 150 119 247 21 6 24 567

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engagement, also varies a great deal: from the passing mention of a fairly low-level orcommon-sense kind of theory, at one extreme, to extended theoretical engagement,perhaps including further theory development, at the other.

What I have chosen to do is simply to record whether articles demonstrated anyengagement with theory (or with analogous terms like concept or model). Table 6records the results, indicating that the majority of the articles in the sample (83%)showed some engagement with theory, even if this was on a fairly small-scale orlow level. That this is a higher proportion than that found in an earlier analysis, ofjournal articles (from a different, but overlapping set of journals) published in 2000(Tight, 2004), suggests that higher education researchers have become more theoreti-cally engaged over the last decade. A greater factor, however, is the difference in thejournals included in the sample, with the present analysis more closely focused onhigher status journals. Table 6 indicates that there is not a huge variability betweenthe journals examined in these terms, with the range only from a minimum of 70%of articles having some, at least minimal, engagement with theory, in the case ofHEMP, to 97% (all but one article) in the case of ResHE.

Table 6 also compares theoretical and methodological explicitness. It shows that,overall, journal articles are slightly less likely to engage with methodology (78%)than theory (83%). Not only that, but there is a far greater variability in the degree towhich journal articles are methodologically explicit. This ranges from a minimum ofjust 40%, in the case of HEMP (again), to a maximum of 100% (i.e. every articlewas methodologically explicit) in the cases of two of the American journals, ResHEand RevHE. For two of the other American journals, JCSD and JHE, the rates were97% and 96% (i.e. all but one article in each case).

However, as the fourth column of the Table indicates – in showing that only 66% ofthe articles were both theoretically andmethodologically explicit – theoretical andmeth-odological explicitness do not necessarily go together. The relationship between these

Table 6. Engagement with methodology and theory in journal articles published in 2010.

Journal Methodology explicit Theory explicit Both explicit Total

AEHE 43 45 35 58HE 73 72 61 85HEMP 8 14 6 20HEP 11 20 9 27HEQ 15 18 12 22HERD 39 41 32 49IHE 14 19 13 25JCSD 32 24 23 33JHE 27 27 26 28JHEPM 28 33 22 40ResHE 37 36 36 37RevHE 18 15 15 18SHE 49 54 47 56THE 33 36 24 49TEAM 13 16 11 20Total 440 470 372 567

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two qualities is complicated, and depends not only on the journal you are publishing inbut the tradition of research you are engaged on. Thus, my earlier study concluded that:

Put simply, if you carry out a survey or an interview-based study, it is expected andaccepted that you will say something, if only briefly, about the size and characteristicsof the sample, and the sampling strategy adopted, but theoretical engagement is notregarded as being so important. In more specialised methodological fields, such as phe-nomenography and critical analysis (and, indeed, certain forms of multivariate analysis)… both methodological and theoretical engagement are expected. Neither conceptualnor documentary analysts, however, feel a need to spell out and discuss their methodo-logical approach – they just do it – though the former tend to engage with theory whilethe latter don’t. (Tight, 2004, p. 404)

Level of analysis

Table 7 categorises the articles published in the 15 journals in 2010 in terms of theirlevel of analysis. Eight more-or-less hierarchical levels have been recognised,varying from a focus on the individual, through the course, department, institution,region, nation and system, to an international focus. Region is here interpreted as alevel between the institution and the nation. The distinction between nation andsystem is perhaps more subtle. Articles with a national level of analysis are clearlyfocused on the circumstances of a particular country, while those with a systemfocus are couched in terms of some idealised higher education system.

Table 7 clearly shows that the dominant level onwhich higher education articles focusis the nation, which accounts for well over one-third (37%) of all the articles published in2010. Articles focusing at the level of the institution (26%), course (13%) and internation-ally (12%) are also popular. By contrast, there are relatively few articles focusing at eitherthe system (4%) or regional (4%) level, and even fewer at the departmental (2%) or theindividual (less than 1%) level. There are clearly issues of acceptability involved here.

Table 7 shows that there are both similarities and variations in the level of analysisin the articles published by different journals. Given their overall popularity, it is hardlysurprising that all of the journals considered published articles focusing on both thenational and institutional levels during the year in question, and that, by contrast,only three published articles focused at the individual level. Articles focused at thecourse level were an important part of the output of AEHE (24 articles), while thosefocused at the international level feature significantly in HE (21 articles). Most journalspublished articles focused at a range of levels, though three journals – JCSD, ResHEand RevHE (all American) – only published articles focused on three levels, andthese were the same three: institution, region and nation.

The patterns observed for the same15 journals in 2000 are very similar, butwith somedifferences. Internationally-focused articles were less common (only 6% of the total),while system-focused ones were more so (10%). While institutionally- and nationally-focused articles were again dominant for the three American journals referred to –

JCSD, ResHE and RevHE – in each case articles focused on other levels were included.Ifwe categorise the 567 articles published in 2010 in terms of both level and theme,we

find that national-level studies are popular for all eight themes, but most particularly forresearch into system policy, for which theme they make up three-quarters of the articles.Institution-level studies are mainly focused on the student experience or course design,with course-level studies also, unsurprisingly, focusing on course design. By comparison,international-level studies are spread more evenly across all eight themes.

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Table 7. Journal articles published in 2010 by level of analysis.

Journal Individual Course Department Institution Region Nation System International Total

AEHE 24 2 14 1 9 5 3 58HE 7 1 17 4 34 1 21 85HEMP 3 2 1 8 6 20HEP 1 4 13 9 27HEQ 2 5 2 10 1 2 22HERD 12 22 13 2 49IHE 1 5 2 5 1 8 2 1 25JCSD 17 4 12 33JHE 3 1 7 1 15 1 28JHEPM 1 7 1 20 2 9 40ResHE 6 2 29 37RevHE 4 2 12 18SHE 2 7 2 18 17 2 8 56THE 1 12 3 15 1 5 8 4 49TEAM 6 6 3 5 20Total 4 76 12 149 20 211 25 70 567

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If we relate level of analysis to method/ologies, national-level studies usingmultivariate techniques account for 19% of all of the articles in the sample. Docu-mentary and interview-based approaches to studying higher education at the nationallevel are also popular. Multivariate methods are well-represented at institutionallevel, accounting for half of all studies at that level: interviews are a popularmethod at this level as well. International-level studies appear to be most oftenapproached using existing documentation. Most conceptual studies are focused onthe system-level, while biographical studies tend to focus at either the course orinstitutional level.

Authors’ location, sex and department

The 567 articles published in the 15 journals analysed during 2010 had a total of 1187authors, an average of 2.1 authors per article. In one extreme case an article had thirteenauthors, but the great majority had one (39% of articles, 19% of authors), two (34%,32%) or three (17%, 24%). This section focuses on the first named authors.

The 567 first authors were located in a total of 35 different countries. The countrycontributing the largest proportion was the USA, with 171 (30%). It was followed byAustralia, with 114 (20%), and the UK, with 99 (17%). The dominance of these threemajor English-speaking countries – in English language journals mostly publishedfrom and/or edited in those countries – is unsurprising, though the finding that Australiacontributed more first authors than the UK perhaps is. Six other nations contributedmore than 10 first authors: New Zealand (21), South Africa (20), Canada (14), Spain(14), the Netherlands (13) and Portugal (11).

Table 8 illustrates the distribution of first authors by region and journal. Leavingaside the USA, Australia and the UK, the rest of Europe, with 93 articles, or 16% of

Table 8. Journal articles published in 2010 by geographic location of first authors.

Journal UKRest ofEurope

USA/Canada

Australia/NewZealand Asia Africa

LatinAmerica Total

AEHE 23 9 12 11 3 58HE 11 31 14 11 12 6 85HEMP 5 6 5 3 1 20HEP 1 14 4 1 6 1 27HEQ 6 4 1 8 2 1 22HERD 3 1 1 44 49IHE 21 4 25JCSD 33 33JHE 28 28JHEPM 6 2 5 26 1 40ResHE 1 35 1 37RevHE 18 18SHE 22 10 1 16 3 3 1 56THE 18 6 4 10 3 8 49TEAM 4 9 3 1 3 20Total 99 93 185 135 31 22 2 567

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the total, makes an impressive contribution. By contrast, but not that surprisingly, rela-tively few authors were based in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

A closer examination of Table 8 reveals some interesting patterns. All five of thejournals based in North America – IHE, JCSD, JHE, ResHE and RevHE – are domi-nated by North American authors, who accounted for 96% of the articles publishedin those journals in 2010. Indeed, three of the five journals (JCSD, JHE and RevHE)only published articles authored by North American-based authors in that year. Asomewhat similar, but less extreme, pattern is evident in two of the journals editedfrom Australia, HERD and JHEPM: in 2010, 79% of the articles they publishedwere by Australian or New Zealand authors. The two other journals indicated inTable 1 as being edited from Australia – HE and HEMP – are much more explicitlyinternational in their focus: they just happened to have Australian editors at this time.

By comparison, four of the UK-edited journals in the sample – AEHE, HEQ, SHEand THE – seem more open to authors from other countries, with only 37% of their firstauthors in 2010 being UK-based. The remaining group of four, more international, jour-nals – HE, HEMP, HEP and TEAM – are notable for having a significant proportion offirst authors (39%) based in the rest of Europe.

Much the same patterns are evident in the journal sample for 2000, but with onedifference: in that year 61% of the articles in AEHE, HEQ, SHE and THE had UK-based first authors. This would suggest that their greater internationalisation of interestsis a relatively recent phenomenon, associated in the case of three of these journals –AEHE, SHE and THE – with a significant expansion in terms of output (see Table 1).

In offering this analysis, I am not meaning to suggest that authors from othercountries are actively discouraged from publishing in American or Australian-basedjournals. Judging from the guidance offered by journals, there is nothing to preventthem from sending their manuscripts to such journals, and some do get published.The American-based journals do, though, seem particularly inward looking. Yet, atthe same time, compared with UK authors, (some) Americans and, particularly, Austra-lasians seem more willing to seek out journal publishing opportunities away from theirhome turf.

If we exclude those first authors whose sex I was unable to determine (10% of thetotal), then women accounted for more of the authors (55%) than men (45%). Of the 15journals, 10 had more women than men first authors in 2010: in the extreme case –

HERD – they accounted for three-quarters of the total. Of the five journals wheremen were in the majority as first authors, three were US-based, with, in the otherextreme case – ResHE – men accounting for three-quarters of the total. Thereappears to have been a significant shift here over the last 10 years. For the same 15 jour-nals in 2000, men accounted for nearly two-thirds (63%) of all first authors whose sexcould be identified. Higher education research is clearly seeing more women gettinginvolved and published.

Information is available on the departmental or other affiliations, within theirinstitutions, of 458 (81%) of the first authors. These have been grouped into nine cat-egories in Table 9. Five of these categories represent common faculty designations –engineering, humanities, medicine, science and social science – but with business andeducation separately identified from the last of these. The other two categoriesemployed are academic development, comprising authors working in centres orunits designed to support and develop academics, and administration, which includesauthors working in managerial or other non-academic functions within highereducation.

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Table 9. Journal articles published in 2010 by departmental location of first authors.

JournalAcademic

development EducationSocialscience Business Humanities Science Engineering Medicine Administration

Notknown Total

AEHE 14 13 8 7 2 5 1 6 2 58HE 23 17 8 1 1 3 1 31 85HEMP 6 2 1 1 2 3 5 20HEP 9 8 3 1 1 5 27HEQ 3 1 1 17 22HERD 9 10 5 8 4 2 1 3 2 5 49IHE 12 3 2 1 1 5 1 25JCSD 15 10 1 3 3 1 33JHE 15 2 1 4 6 28JHEPM 2 13 2 11 1 1 2 8 40ResHE 1 15 6 2 1 4 8 37RevHE 13 1 1 2 1 18SHE 8 17 7 7 1 3 2 11 56THE 14 13 4 1 2 4 1 3 1 6 49TEAM 7 3 4 1 3 2 20Total 48 184 79 57 11 17 6 25 31 109 567

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Unsurprisingly, Table 9 shows that the most popular departmental location forauthors is education, which accounts for 40% of those whose location could be ident-ified. Social science (17%) and business (12%) departments are also popular locations.Taken together, these three columns indicate that just over two-thirds of first authors arelocated in what might be broadly termed social science locations. Outside of the depart-mental organisation, but still within the university, academic development units (10%)make a significant contribution, as do those working in administrative functions (7%).Those in the other four faculties of engineering, humanities, medicine and science makeup relatively small proportions of the total authorship, but still contribute 13% of thepublished articles between them.

This confirms the spread of interest in higher education research throughout a widerange of subjects or disciplines (Teichler, 1996). It also suggests an involvement inhigher education research not only from senior managers in universities, but alsofrom the much larger and more diverse group of people charged with running differentsorts of higher education programmes, initiatives and support services.

Table 9 also illustrates some suggestive variations in departmental location byjournal. Thus, those in academic development units seem to be particularly successfulin publishing in AEHE,HERD and THE. Authors from education departments dominatethe five American journals in the sample – IHE, JCSD, JHE, ResHE and RevHE –

accounting for 47% of those whose locations could be identified. Authors from othersocial science departments appear particularly well represented in HE and JCSD,while those from business and/or management schools feature strongly in JHEPM.

Summary

Table 10 summarises the analysis presented in this article. It demonstrates that the 15journals analysed can be characterised as occupying a variety of different niches ormarkets within higher education research. Thus, each journal may be categorised interms of its focus on:

. themes or issues for research

. method/ologies for undertaking research

. levels of analysis

. authors based in particular countries or regions.

While it would be false to claim that every variety was available amongst the journalsexamined for both readers and authors, it would appear that there is a considerable andprobably sufficient variety. Thus, at one extreme, we have a truly international journalpublishing articles on all aspects of higher education that make use of a wide range ofmethod/ologies: HE. There is a range of other international journals with a clearerfocus on particular themes: course design (AEHE, THE), the student experience(SHE), institutional management (HEMP, HEQ, TEAM), system policy (HEMP, HEP,HEQ). Some of these emphasise multivariate or documentary research methods, whileothers appear more open to a range of analytical approaches.

Then there are journals that focus much more on their ‘home’ audiences – fiveNorth American (IHE, JCSD, JHE, ResHE and RevHE) and two Australasian(HERD and JHEPM) – both in terms of authorship and in the level of the studiesreported. Four of the American journals (JCSD, JHE, ResHE and RevHE) exhibit aparticular preference for multivariate methods.

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The foci of each of the 15 journals – in terms of themes, method/ologies and levelsof analysis – have remained much the same between 2000 and 2010. The main changeis that four journals (AEHE, HEQ, SHE and THE) have become international in focusand authorship over this period, doubling the number (HE, HEMP, HEP and TEAM)that already were.

Of course, if more journals had been analysed, more niches would have beenidentified, in particular amongst those journals focusing on particular disciplines.More home-based journals would also have been identified, including those focusingon the UK and other European countries (though the latter would, of course, not beEnglish language).

Conclusion

Three main trends may be noted over the 10-year period between 2000 and 2010.First, the increase in the volume of high quality higher education research being

published in journals based outside of North America is striking. This is clear evidencehere of the increasing maturity of the field worldwide.

Second, the increasingly international orientation of the leading higher educationresearch journals, outside North America and, to a lesser extent, Australasia, is

Table 10. Summary characteristics of the 15 journals examined.

Journal Themes Method/ologies Level Authors

AEHE Course design Multivariate/mixed Course/institution InternationalHE Generic Multivariate Nation/international InternationalHEMP Management/policy Documentary Nation/international InternationalHEP System policy Documentary Nation/international InternationalHEQ Management/policy Multivariate/

documentaryNation/institution International

HERD Course design Mixed Institution/nation/course

Australasian

IHE Course design Documentary/mixed Nation/institution/course

NorthAmerican

JCSD Student experience Multivariate Institution/nation NorthAmerican

JHE Student experience Multivariate Nation/institution NorthAmerican

JHEPM Management/work Documentary/multivariate

Nation/international Australasian

ResHE Student experience/generic

Multivariate Nation NorthAmerican

RevHE Student experience Multivariate Nation NorthAmerican

SHE Student experience/generic

Mixed Institution/nation/generic

International

THE Course design Mixed Institution/course/generic

International

TEAM Institutionalmanagement

Documentary/multivariate

Institution/nation/international

International

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suggestive of a body of researchers increasingly talking to each other across frontiers.North American and Australasian authors are, though, more likely to publish outsideof their own countries.

Third, higher education research has shifted from being a field dominated by men toone in which women play a more equal role, and may soon come to dominate in turn.

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