LEADING UNITED-STATES UNIVERSITIES AND MOST INFLUENTIAL CONTRIBUTORS IN DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS RESEARCH (1971-1989) - A CITATION ANALYSIS

This paper identifies the most influential contributors in the DSS area in the U.S., examines their contributions, and reviews the institutional publishing records at the leading U.S. universities, which are actively publishing DSS research. To measure the influence/contributions of leading universities and contributors, we used the bibliographic citations of the publications on the specific DSS applications. The critical assumption of this study is that ''bibliographic citations are an acceptable surrogate for the actual influence of various information sources.'' (M.J. Culnan, Management Science 32, 2, feb 1986, 156-172) This paper identifies thirty-two leading U.S. universities with eighty-one of their affiliated members and twenty three most influential researchers. Among the leading U.S. universities identified, two universities are truly outstanding: The University of Texas-Austin and MIT. Regardless of any types of yardsticks which may be applied to measure their contributions, these two universities may be recognized as centers of excellent DSS research in the U.S.A. in terms of the number of research publications, the number of total citation frequencies, and the number of active researchers in the DSS related areas.