Die Spielzeuge des Managements: Evaluationen, Rankings, Benchmarks...

Klaus Ritzberger / Jeff Clovis

On ranking of journals in economics – a public discourse

Ort: Universitätsbibliothek Wien, kleiner Lesesaal
Zeit: Donnerstag, 9.9.2010, 14:00-16:30

Abstract

The subject categories in JCR have been established over time by the Editors responsible for the various subject areas of the database. The process of identifying subject categories and populating them with journals has been ongoing since the establishment of the Science Citation Index, and the Social Science Citation Index. The categories found in the Journal Citation Reports are the same categories used to create, organize, and manage the collection of journals covered in the SCI and SSCI.

The JCR subject categories are populated with journals that focus primarily on research on a particular topic (Acoustics, Andrology, Biology, Civil Engineering, Economics, Limnology, Marine and Freshwater Biology, Genetics and Heredity etc.) The scope of each of these categories is defined in a category Scope Note.

The definition of the category as articulated in its Scope Note is not intended to be an ideal description of every possible aspect of the field. Rather, it reflects quite specifically the content of the journals Thomson Reuters has collected under it over the past 40+ years. In other words, the definition of the category is a concise listing of the topics covered by the journals in it.

This category is managed by the subject specialist editorial staff. The evaluation process for each new journal dealing with basic research in economics involves a careful examination of its editorial content. Journals typically publish a scope statement. At Thomson Reuters the editor uses this as a starting point and goes on to review the content of articles to determine the actual editorial scope of the journal. With this information in hand the editor decides if the journal's content is largely similar to the content of the overall collection of journals in the category as defined in the category Scope Note or not. The decision whether or not to include the new journal in the category and/or other appropriate categories follows.

Citation activity varies widely among subject categories. Many journals generate far more citations than do journals in other categories. Therefore, to validate the ranking of journals by Impact Factor within categories, it is essential that strong topical relationships exist among the journals in a given category.

The Scope Notes for JCR categories are studied continually and updated as the editorial content of the collections of journals changes. In addition, journal assignments are examined regularly to ensure they are still appropriate.

In this session we will explore the history of the economics category over the past 10 years and then take a closer look at the citation activity in this set of journals or rather category through the examination of both internal JCR citing/cited relationships and an examination of data through a different resource, the Journal Analysis Database. Specifically:

• Identify the most cited and most frequently appearing authors publishing in economics.
• Analyze authors and institutions publishing in economics titles by their geographic location.
• Classify most cited studies by topic to learn which subjects have provoked the greatest interest among researchers.
• Discover the degree to which different types of articles, such as reviews, notes, letter, meeting abstracts, etc., are actually cited and therefore appeal to readers.
• Perform all the above analyses over time, for each year.
• Gauge the international appeal of economics journals by analyzing the national origins of the papers that cite your each title.

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