As part of an internal document to accompany the political science proposal for the UC Merced strategic focusing inititative in November 2013, the department generated a ranking of political science programs based on publications in top academic journals and book presses. Using data on faculty publications in the top six academic journals and book presses in the field of political science, the report presents a measure of the average annual rate of publication per faculty member for the top 20 political science programs ranked by U.S. News and World Report, as well as the five additional University of California programs. For a combined measure of article and book publication rates, UC Merced’s political science program ranks second among these elite programs, behind only Washington University and ahead of, for example, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, Princeton, UC San Diego, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Michigan, and UC Los Angeles. With regard to the research productivity of only faculty with PhDs earned in 1998 or later, UC Merced ranks seventh in the sample. However, considering only journal publications, UC Merced is the top ranked program in the sample. The full report is available on request.
Updated 2021