Profs. Collins & Spencer Make Top 100 List of Social Work Researchers
Boston University School of Social Work (BUSSW) Professors Mary Collins and Renee Spencer are among the top 100 contributors to social work scholarship, according to a recently released article in Research on Social Work Practice, a journal published by SAGE journals.
The article, “Who are the Top 100 Contributors to Social Work Journal Scholarship? A Global Study on Career Impact in the Profession,” was written by David R. Hodge and Patricia R. Turner of Arizona State. They relied on a publicly available database of the world’s leading scientists and extracted all scholars in the social work category. Their ranking of researchers is based on a composite measure of scholarly impact that controls for self-citations and author order. The study summary notes that this may be the first empirical picture of leading social work scholars from across the world, offering a snapshot of the individuals who are contributing to the profession’s literature in terms of their backgrounds and level of social work training. Leveraging their skills and knowledge can help advance the profession’s collective knowledge development and dissemination.
Professor Collins is an internationally recognized expert on child welfare. She serves as the international editorial advisor for the British Journal of Social Work and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Policy Practice and Research. Author of Macro Perspectives on Youths Aging Out of Foster Care (NASW Press, 2015), Collins’ recent research has appeared in journals including Children and Youth Services Review, Journal of Education and Work, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, and Journal of Social Policy. Over the past decade, she has been a visiting scholar in Switzerland at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, in Ethiopia at the University of Gondar, and in Northern Ireland at Queen’s University School of Social Work. Collins spent the 2011-2012 academic year as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City. Her current research, funded by the Institute for Research on Poverty, is focused on employment-related policies for vulnerable youth.
Professor Spencer, chair of the Human Behavior, Research, and Policy department at BUSSW, engages in research that identifies the relational processes at work in youth mentoring relationships – those that are successful and those that are not. Her work has delineated why and how relationships end prematurely, highlighted how parents are under-engaged stakeholders, examined how mentors’ attitudes and behaviors can enhance or detract from a quality relationship, and highlighted the importance of tailoring mentoring to the specific needs of special populations of youth, such as systems-involved and military-connected youth. She is the author of more than 80 publications, including articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Adolescent Research, Children and Youth Services Review, and Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and an editorial board member for Qualitative Psychology and Applied Developmental Science. She serves on the National Mentoring Resource Center Research Board and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America Research Advisory Council.
The study authors note, “Unfortunately, social work has relatively few mechanisms for recognizing major contributions to the profession. This study represents one step toward rectifying this concern within the domain of scholarship.” The study is available online now and will be published in Research on Social Work Practice.