An Evaluation of Journal Quality: The Perspective of Business Ethics Researchers 1

The subject of journal quality has received little attention in the business ethics literature. While there are reasons for this past neglect, there are important new considerations which make it vital that researchers now address this topic. First, virtually all business school departments use evaluations of journal quality as an important indicator of scholarly achievement, yet business ethics has no such studies. Second, as many schools are beginning to ask ethicists to publish in the wider management literature, it is important to find a way to compare journal quality across these domains. In the absence of such studies, performance review committees (including tenure decisions) may well make incorrect inferences about journal quality within business ethics or assume that ethics journals are not prestigious unless a candidate can provide evidence to the contrary (i.e. as in a study like this one). This study addresses these two issues. It relies on an opinion-based survey to establish journal quality by incorporating a list of journals within business ethics and the wider management literature. The target population is active business ethics researchers within the Society for Business Ethics (SBE). We present the results of the study and discuss their implications.