Does sticking close to home make for better research? In-state authorship and citation rates in public administration journals

Objective: Although other social science disciplines have considered researcher positionality, whether a researcher belongs to the communities they study (insider) or does not (outsider), public administration scholars have yet to examine this aspect of scholarly production nor its impacts on perceptions of research quality. Methods: We use a data set of 554 articles from eight top public administration journals that focus on a single or a few states in the United States as the research setting. Using in-state authorship as a proxy for insider research, we test whether insider status significantly affects citation rates for these articles. Results: Findings indicate that citation rates are higher for in-state authors, but the journal impact factor serves as a critical moderating factor. Articles written by in-state authors in Public Administration Review or Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory (the field's top two journals) are cited around 30 percent more than out-of-state authors, and we estimate that the articles across journals likely to be cited most are written by in-state authors. Conclusion: Although there is room for strong insider and outsider research in social sciences, generally, and public administration, specifically, scholars should remain mindful of positionality from both the production and consumption sides of the research process.