Notre Dame business professor ranked No. 1 in published research

Dean Shepherd, Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, was recognized as the most prolific business and economics researcher. 

The rating of No. 1 on the listing of 88 authors was based on Shepherd’s publications in 50 business and economics journals represented in the Financial Times from 2008 to 2022. 

The report, “What Do We Know About the Science of Science in Business and Economics? Insights From the Top 50 Journals, 2008–2022,” published in Productions and Operations Management, analyzed more than 55,000 papers published by more than 54,000 unique authors during this period. 

The aim was to document the growth in the publications related to operations management and multidisciplinary areas, in addition to other findings. 

Shepherd, who joined Notre Dame in 2017, researches and teaches in the area of the cognitive-emotional mechanisms of potential opportunities, new ventures, entrepreneurial responses to adversity, and entrepreneurial creation and destruction. A fellow of the Academy of Management, he has been awarded four honorary doctorates from Jonkoping University (Sweden), Technical University of Munich (Germany), Lulea University of Technology (Sweden), and Hanken School of Economics (Finland). 

The ranking was the latest of Shepherd’s research awards and recognitions. He also was recently named the winner of the 2025 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, the most prestigious award for outstanding research contributions in this subject area. 

In bestowing the entrepreneurship research award, the awards committee stated, “For almost three decades, Dean Shepherd has had an unparalleled impact on scholarly developments within the international community of entrepreneurship researchers. His extraordinarily broad and methodologically varied research has had a profound influence on research on several central aspects of the entrepreneurial process.” 

Shepherd’s awards also include the Dedication to Entrepreneurship Award, the Mentor Award, and the Foundational Paper Award. 

A past editor-in-chief of the Journal Business Venturing, he has authored more than 20 books and 180 publications in top management and entrepreneurship journals with over 90,000 Google citations.