IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kyo/wpaper/746.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What Makes a Great Journal Great in the Sciences? Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

Author

Listed:
  • Chia-Lin Chang

    (Department of Applied Economics, Department of Finance, National Chung Hsing University)

  • Michael McAleer

    (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Tinbergen Institute, The Netherlands, and Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University)

  • Les Oxley

    (Department of Economics and Finance, University of Canterbury)

Abstract

The paper is concerned with analysing what makes a great journal great in the sciences, based on quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAM). Alternative RAM are discussed, with an emphasis on the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science database (hereafter ISI). Various ISI RAM that are calculated annually or updated daily are defined and analysed, including the classic 2-year impact factor (2YIF), 5-year impact factor (5YIF), Immediacy (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, Zinfluence, PI-BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors), Impact Factor Inflation (IFI), and three new RAM, namely Historical Self-citation Threshold Approval Rating (H-STAR), 2 Year Self-citation Threshold Approval Rating (2Y-STAR), and Cited Article Influence (CAI). The RAM data are analysed for the 6 most highly cited journals in 20 highly-varied and well-known ISI categories in the sciences, where the journals are chosen on the basis of 2YIF. The application to these 20 ISI categories could be used as a template for other ISI categories in the sciences and social sciences, and as a benchmark for newer journals in a range of ISI disciplines. In addition to evaluating the 6 most highly cited journals in each of 20 ISI categories, the paper also highlights the similarities and differences in alternative RAM, finds that several RAM capture similar performance characteristics for the most highly cited scientific journals, determines that PI-BETA is not highly correlated with the other RAM, and hence conveys additional information regarding research performance. In order to provide a meta analysis summary of the RAM, which are predominantly ratios, harmonic mean rankings are presented of the 13 RAM for the 6 most highly cited journals in each of the 20 ISI categories. It is shown that emphasizing THE impact factor, specifically the 2-year impact factor, of a journal to the exclusion of other informative RAM can lead to a distorted evaluation of journal performance and influence on different disciplines, especially in view of inflated journal self citations.

Suggested Citation

  • Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer & Les Oxley, 2010. "What Makes a Great Journal Great in the Sciences? Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?," KIER Working Papers 746, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:kyo:wpaper:746
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.kier.kyoto-u.ac.jp/DP/DP746.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer & Les Oxley, 2011. "Great Expectatrics: Great Papers, Great Journals, Great Econometrics," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(6), pages 583-619.
    2. Bornmann, Lutz & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2009. "Extent of type I and type II errors in editorial decisions: A case study on Angewandte Chemie International Edition," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 348-352.
    3. Lutz Bornmann & Rüdiger Mutz & Hans‐Dieter Daniel, 2008. "Are there better indices for evaluation purposes than the h index? A comparison of nine different variants of the h index using data from biomedicine," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(5), pages 830-837, March.
    4. Mark R. Elkins & Christopher G. Maher & Robert D. Herbert & Anne M. Moseley & Catherine Sherrington, 2010. "Correlation between the Journal Impact Factor and three other journal citation indices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(1), pages 81-93, October.
    5. Christoph Neuhaus & Werner Marx & Hans‐Dieter Daniel, 2009. "The publication and citation impact profiles of Angewandte Chemie and the Journal of the American Chemical Society based on the sections of Chemical Abstracts: A case study on the limitations of the J," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(1), pages 176-183, January.
    6. Schubert, András & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2007. "A systematic analysis of Hirsch-type indices for journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(3), pages 179-184.
    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. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael Mcaleer, 2014. "Just How Good Are The Top Three Journals In Finance? An Assessment Based On Quantity And Quality Citations," Annals of Financial Economics (AFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(01), pages 1-31.
    2. Chang, Chia-Lin & McAleer, Michael & Oxley, Les, 2013. "Coercive journal self citations, impact factor, Journal Influence and Article Influence," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 190-197.
    3. Chang, C-L. & McAleer, M.J., 2011. "Citations and Impact of ISI Tourism and Hospitality Journals," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI2011-26, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    4. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael Mcaleer, 2013. "What Do Experts Know About Forecasting Journal Quality? A Comparison With Isi Research Impact In Finance," Annals of Financial Economics (AFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(01), pages 1-30.
    5. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2018. "Are leaders really leading? Journals that are first in Web of Science subject categories in the context of their groups," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 111-130, April.
    6. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2013. "Ranking Leading Econometrics Journals Using Citations Data from ISI and RePEc," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 1(3), pages 1-19, November.
    7. Joseph Gerald Hirschberg & Jeanette Ngaire Lye, 2020. "Grading Journals In Economics: The Abcs Of The Abdc," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 876-921, September.
    8. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer & Les Oxley, 2012. "Journal Impact Factor, Eigenfactor, Journal Influence and Article Influence," Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE 2012-15, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico.
    9. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2014. "Quality Weighted Citations Versus Total Citations in the Sciences and Social Sciences," Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE 2014-06, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico.
    10. Chang Chia-Lin & McAleer Michael, 2014. "Ranking Economics and Econometrics ISI Journals by Quality Weighted Citations," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 65(1), pages 35-52, April.
    11. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, "undated". "Quality Weighted Citations Versus Total Citations in the Sciences and Social Sciences, with an Application to Finance and Accounting," Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE 2015-01, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico, revised Jan 2015.
    12. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2013. "Ranking journal quality by harmonic mean of ranks: an application to ISI statistics & probability," Statistica Neerlandica, Netherlands Society for Statistics and Operations Research, vol. 67(1), pages 27-53, February.
    13. Chang, C-L. & McAleer, M.J., 2012. "What do Experts Know About Ranking Journal Quality? A Comparison with ISI Research Impact in Finance," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI2012-01, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    14. McAleer, M.J., 2015. "Research Ideas for the Journal of Informatics and Data Mining: Opinion," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI2015-26, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    15. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2017. "Researcher rank stability across alternative output measurement schemes in the context of a time limited research evaluation: the New Zealand case," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(45), pages 4542-4553, September.
    16. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2014. "How Should Journal Quality be Ranked? An Application to Agricultural, Energy, Environmental and Resource Economics," Journal of Reviews on Global Economics, Lifescience Global, vol. 3, pages 33-47.
    17. Chia-Lin Chang & Esfandiar Maasoumi & Michael McAleer, 2016. "Robust Ranking of Journal Quality: An Application to Economics," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 50-97, January.
    18. Walters, William H., 2014. "Do Article Influence scores overestimate the citation impact of social science journals in subfields that are related to higher-impact natural science disciplines?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 421-430.
    19. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2015. "Bibliometric Rankings of Journals Based on the Thomson Reuters Citations Database," Journal of Reviews on Global Economics, Lifescience Global, vol. 4, pages 120-125.
    20. Justus Haucap & Johannes Muck, 2015. "What drives the relevance and reputation of economics journals? An update from a survey among economists," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(3), pages 849-877, June.
    21. Fabio Zagonari, 2019. "Scientific Production and Productivity for Characterizing an Author’s Publication History: Simple and Nested Gini’s and Hirsch’s Indexes Combined," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-30, May.
    22. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2019. "Modeling Latent Carbon Emission Prices for Japan: Theory and Practice," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-21, November.

    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. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer & Les Oxley, 2012. "Journal Impact Factor, Eigenfactor, Journal Influence and Article Influence," KIER Working Papers 822, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    2. Mingkun Wei, 2020. "Research on impact evaluation of open access journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(2), pages 1027-1049, February.
    3. Chang, Chia-Lin & McAleer, Michael & Oxley, Les, 2013. "Coercive journal self citations, impact factor, Journal Influence and Article Influence," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 190-197.
    4. Li Zhai & Xiangbin Yan & Bin Zhu, 2014. "The H l -index: improvement of H-index based on quality of citing papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1021-1031, February.
    5. Mingers, John & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2015. "A review of theory and practice in scientometrics," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(1), pages 1-19.
    6. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Domenico Maisano, 2011. "On the analogy between the evolution of thermodynamic and bibliometric systems: a breakthrough or just a bubble?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(1), pages 315-327, October.
    7. Ye, Fred Y. & Rousseau, Ronald, 2008. "The power law model and total career h-index sequences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 288-297.
    8. Schreiber, M. & Malesios, C.C. & Psarakis, S., 2012. "Exploratory factor analysis for the Hirsch index, 17 h-type variants, and some traditional bibliometric indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 347-358.
    9. Liu, Xuan Zhen & Fang, Hui, 2020. "A comparison among citation-based journal indicators and their relative changes with time," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    10. Zhang, Lin & Thijs, Bart & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2011. "The diffusion of H-related literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 583-593.
    11. John Panaretos & Chrisovaladis Malesios, 2009. "Assessing scientific research performance and impact with single indices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(3), pages 635-670, December.
    12. Lutz Bornmann & Alexander Butz & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2018. "What are the top five journals in economics? A new meta-ranking," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(6), pages 659-675, February.
    13. Péter Vinkler, 2011. "Application of the distribution of citations among publications in scientometric evaluations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1963-1978, October.
    14. Rüdiger Mutz & Tobias Wolbring & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2017. "The effect of the “very important paper” (VIP) designation in Angewandte Chemie International Edition on citation impact: A propensity score matching analysis," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(9), pages 2139-2153, September.
    15. Yan, Xiangbin & Zhai, Li & Fan, Weiguo, 2013. "C-index: A weighted network node centrality measure for collaboration competence," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 223-239.
    16. Alonso, S. & Cabrerizo, F.J. & Herrera-Viedma, E. & Herrera, F., 2009. "h-Index: A review focused in its variants, computation and standardization for different scientific fields," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 273-289.
    17. Zhao, Star X. & Rousseau, Ronald & Ye, Fred Y., 2011. "h-Degree as a basic measure in weighted networks," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 668-677.
    18. Antonio Fernandez-Cano & Inés M. Fernández-Guerrero, 2017. "A multivariate model for evaluating emergency medicine journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(2), pages 991-1003, February.
    19. Vîiu, Gabriel-Alexandru, 2016. "A theoretical evaluation of Hirsch-type bibliometric indicators confronted with extreme self-citation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 552-566.
    20. Sibilla Montanari & Evi Agostini & Denis Francesconi, 2023. "Are We Talking about Green Skills or Sustainability Competences? A Scoping Review Using Scientometric Analysis of Two Apparently Similar Topics in the Field of Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-25, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Research Assessment Measures (RAM); impact factors; Immediacy; Eigenfactor; Article Influence; Cited Article Influence; h-index; C3PO; Zinfluence; PI-BETA; IFI; H-STAR; 2Y-STAR.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:kyo:wpaper:746. 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: Makoto Watanabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iekyojp.html .

    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.