IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/touman/v51y2015icp300-302.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

IF you can keep your head: The unintended consequences of the Impact Factor on tourism research

Author

Listed:
  • Poria, Yaniv
  • Schwartz, Zvi
  • Uysal, Muzaffer

Abstract

The growing importance of academic journals' Impact Factor (IF) is reshaping the research arena. In this paper we discuss the possible impact of the IF on tourism research and on key players such as editors of top-tier tourism journals, students, researchers as well as directors of tourism academic units. It also examines the impact on the public whose funds make up part of scholars' salaries and, to some extent, research grants. It is argued here that by encouraging researchers to target only journals with a high IF, research may come to a standstill, as exploratory, industry-related or critical studies may cease being conducted and published. This is a call to minimize the reliance on the IF and its glorification as an indicator of research quality and researchers' performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Poria, Yaniv & Schwartz, Zvi & Uysal, Muzaffer, 2015. "IF you can keep your head: The unintended consequences of the Impact Factor on tourism research," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 300-302.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:touman:v:51:y:2015:i:c:p:300-302
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2015.05.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517715001053
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tourman.2015.05.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Hall, C., 2011. "Publish and perish? Bibliometric analysis, journal ranking and the assessment of research quality in tourism," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 16-27.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas, Rhodri & Ormerod, Neil, 2017. "The (almost) imperceptible impact of tourism research on policy and practice," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 379-389.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gallego-Losada, María-Jesús & Montero-Navarro, Antonio & García-Abajo, Elisa & Gallego-Losada, Rocío, 2023. "Digital financial inclusion. Visualizing the academic literature," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    2. Ángel Acevedo-Duque & Alejandro Vega-Muñoz & Guido Salazar-Sepúlveda, 2020. "Analysis of Hospitality, Leisure, and Tourism Studies in Chile," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-20, September.
    3. Rodríguez Sánchez, Isabel & Makkonen, Teemu & Williams, Allan M., 2019. "Peer review assessment of originality in tourism journals: critical perspective of key gatekeepers," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 1-11.
    4. Xie, Yundong & Wu, Qiang & Zhang, Peng & Li, Xingchen, 2020. "Information Science and Library Science (IS-LS) journal subject categorisation and comparison based on editorship information," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    5. Sharma, Anuj & Nunkoo, Robin & Rana, Nripendra P. & Dwivedi, Yogesh K., 2021. "On the intellectual structure and influence of tourism social science research," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    6. Carlos Sánchez‐Camacho & Rocío Carranza & David Martín‐Consuegra & Estrella Díaz, 2022. "Evolution, trends and future research lines in corporate social responsibility and tourism: A bibliometric analysis and science mapping," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 462-476, June.
    7. Ruturaj Baber & Yogesh Upadhyay & Prerana Baber & Rahul Pratap Singh Kaurav, 2023. "Three Decades of Consumer Ethnocentrism Research: A Bibliometric Analysis," Business Perspectives and Research, , vol. 11(1), pages 137-158, January.
    8. Anastasios Zopiatis & Antonis L. Theocharous & Panayiotis Constanti, 2015. "‘The past is prologue to the future’: an introspective view of hospitality and tourism research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1731-1753, February.
    9. Valentina Della Corte & Giovanna Del Gaudio & Fabiana Sepe & Fabiana Sciarelli, 2019. "Sustainable Tourism in the Open Innovation Realm: A Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-18, November.
    10. Simon Hussain & Lana Liu & Yue Wang & Lingyan Zuo, 2015. "Journal Rankings, Collaborative Research and Publication Strategies: Evidence from China," Accounting Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3), pages 233-255, June.
    11. Figueroa-Domecq, Cristina & Pritchard, Annette & Segovia-Pérez, Mónica & Morgan, Nigel & Villacé-Molinero, Teresa, 2015. "Tourism gender research: A critical accounting," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 87-103.
    12. Mingers, John & Yang, Liying, 2017. "Evaluating journal quality: A review of journal citation indicators and ranking in business and management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(1), pages 323-337.
    13. Hall, C. Michael & Page, Stephen J., 2015. "Following the impact factor: Utilitarianism or academic compliance?," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 309-312.
    14. Fernando J. Garrigos-Simon & Yeamduan Narangajavana-Kaosiri & Yeamdao Narangajavana, 2019. "Quality in Tourism Literature: A Bibliometric Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-22, July.
    15. Perlin, Marcelo S. & Santos, André A.P. & Imasato, Takeyoshi & Borenstein, Denis & Da Silva, Sergio, 2017. "The Brazilian scientific output published in journals: A study based on a large CV database," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 18-31.
    16. Humphrey, Christopher & Gendron, Yves, 2015. "What is going on? The sustainability of accounting academia," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 47-66.
    17. Dixon, Keith, 2013. "Growth and dispersion of accounting research about New Zealand before and during a National Research Assessment Exercise: Five decades of academic journals bibliometrics," MPRA Paper 51100, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Martorell Cunil, Onofre & Otero González, Luis & Durán Santomil, Pablo & Mulet Forteza, Carlos, 2023. "How to accomplish a highly cited paper in the tourism, leisure and hospitality field," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    19. Buckley, Ralf, 2019. "Tourism publications as newly tradeable commodities: Academic performance, prestige, power, competition, constraints and consents," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 121-133.
    20. Valentina Della Corte & Giovanna Del Gaudio & Fabiana Sepe & Simone Luongo, 2021. "Destination Resilience and Innovation for Advanced Sustainable Tourism Management: A Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-19, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:touman:v:51:y:2015:i:c:p:300-302. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/tourism-management .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.