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Article Excerpt
A threshold citation approach is used to measure the research influence of academic real estate journals, institutions and individual researchers. Real Estate Economics followed by The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics and Journal of Real Estate Research are the most influential real estate journals. Almost 63% of heavily cited works in core real estate journals are published in real estate journals. Twenty-one percent of the heavily cited works are published in Real Estate Economics. An overwhelming 80% of the citations of the 21 most heavily cited papers in real estate come from articles published in real estate journals. Even when real estate articles are published in top-tier finance and economics journals, the majority of the citations associated with these articles come from top real estate journals. This provides strong evidence of the existence of a distinct real estate research discipline. As compared to prior studies, an expanded universe of institutions is found to influence real estate research. Research-extensive universities generating high-quality economics, statistics and finance research influence the real estate discipline. The individuals that are most influential, however, are generally those with substantial real estate discipline specific research.
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Quantification of academic programs, departmental research productivity, individual research productivity, academic influence, the quality of academic journals and other measures of academic performance remains an illusive goal. The scope of the outcomes being measured, the goals of academic disciplines and differences in methodology make absolute quantification of performance difficult to assess. Notwithstanding the potential difficulty in evaluating performance, such assessment is very typical and very necessary in academia and is supported by multiple studies generating results that are interpretable in both narrow and broad contexts. The present study adds to the ability to evaluate research output and influence in the real estate discipline by using a threshold citation approach to assess the journals, institutions and individuals that are influential in the development of the theories and research applications within the real estate discipline. Additionally, the citation analysis highlights the distinctness of real estate as a separate academic discipline.
There have been a number of studies that have attempted to quantify the top real estate journals. In several studies journals have been ranked through the use of surveys. Webb and Albert (1995), Diaz, Black and Rabianski (1996) and Gibler and Ziobrowski (2002) use survey results to rank the most influential real estate journals. Redman, Manakyan and Tanner (1998, 1999) use citation data to analyze the important real estate journals. Hardin et al. (2006) use the publication outlets of editorial board members to gauge the importance of journals and find that Real Estate Economics, The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Journal of Real Estate Research and Journal of Urban Economics are the outlets favored by real estate editorial board members. In the present study, a threshold citation approach as used by Arnold et al. (2003) and Chan, Lung and Wolfe (2005) ranks the influence of real estate journals by their publication of heavily cited articles. In order of impact, Real Estate Economics, The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics and Journal of Real Estate Research are shown to be the academic real estate journals that generate the most influential works driving real estate research. Research in top-tier econometrics, economics and finance journals also provides part of the foundation for real estate research. The majority (62.60%) of all high-frequency citations are from real estate journals. Within the universe of real estate and related journals, the four most heavily cited journals are Real Estate Economics (20.80%), The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics (15.84%), Journal of Real Estate Research (10.27%) and Journal of Urban Economics (5.49%), which highlights the fact that real estate is a separate academic discipline.
The 25 most-cited articles are also presented and evaluated. Four of the most cited works come from Real Estate Economics and five come from The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. Journal of Real Estate Research provides only one of the most heavily cited papers. The important research topics manifested by the 25 most-cited works include statistics, methodology, mortgage valuation, including mortgage-backed securities, investment valuation and the asset/market pricing of real property. Excluding statistical or methodological papers, the journals publishing articles that cite the top 21 most-cited publications in real estate are predominantly core or related real estate journals. Even when real estate articles are published in top-tier finance and economics journals, the vast majority of the citations of these articles appear in the top real estate journals. This outcome supports a delineated real estate discipline and implies that the majority of citations for real estate-related articles will be in real estate journals notwithstanding where these articles are published.
Concurrently, institutional research output has been evaluated. Part of Dom-brow and Turnbull's (2000, 2002) research is focused on institutional research productivity in real estate as measured by publications. Using a methodology provided by Chan and Fok (2003), Urbancic (2004) provides additional research assessment by using editorial board membership and affiliation to benchmark institutional performance. The research output and benchmark requirements for editorial board membership are used to connote an institution's research influence. The current study focuses on the generation of heavily cited papers as evidence of institutional research influence and uses citations in these papers to measure an institution's real estate-oriented research impact. Thus, it takes into account both the production of research and its use to formulate additional research.
Finally, there have been several recent works evaluating individual research productivity within the real estate discipline. Dombrow and Turnbull (2000, 2002) provide descriptive results ranking individual research production in The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics and in eight highly ranked broad academic real estate journals and a subset of real estate journals defined as core academic real estate journals including Real Estate Economics, The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics and Journal of Real Estate Research. In a subsequent work, Dombrow and Turnbull (2004) use citation counts over a 14-year period to rank authors. Hardin et al. (2006) use the publication records of the editorial board members of Dombrow and Turnbull's (2002) core academic real estate journals to benchmark real estate research productivity. None of these existing studies, however, directly measures the influence of the articles published by these prolific real estate researchers. In this study, the influence of a specific research work is measured using citations generated in the top academic real estate journals. This is a complementary measure to the listing and evaluation of individual publications and partially takes into account that some articles are simply more influential in the guidance of additional research than others.
In the sections that follow, the research methodology is detailed, results are presented and conclusions and implications are provided.
Data and Methodology
The bibliographic section of all articles published in Real Estate Economics (formally the Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association) and The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics from 2000 to 2004 are downloaded from the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) of the Web of Science. The bibliographic data filtered by journal title are only available starting in 2000, which restricts analysis to the period used in this study. (1) Because Journal of Real Estate Research is not part of the SSCI, the bibliographic section of articles published in Journal of Real Estate Research is collected manually. These three journals are chosen as they are commonly regarded as the top three academic real estate journals (Redman, Manakyan and Tanner 1999, Dombrow and Turnbull 2002, Hardin et al. 2006). During the 5-year time period studied, these top three real estate journals published 443 articles creating a total of 11,187 citations representing 4,911 research works. (2) These cited research works are published in an extensive number of publication outlets and hence are not limited to a narrowly predetermined set of journals. The combination of 11,187 citations and 4,911 research works suggests that, on the average, each research work is cited approximately 2.28 times. This average, however, could be misleading because some research works are cited much more frequently and, hence, are more influential on real estate research than others.
Application of the threshold citation methodology implies that the universe of citations is truncated to reflect only the more frequently cited research works. A frequently cited research work in this study is thus defined as a research work that has been cited three or more times by articles published in the top three...
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