What’s the effect of journal rankings? One may think that we rank SCM journals in order to see (a) which journal is of highest quality (to look up to when we search for good articles), (b) which journal has the most outreach (and thus, maybe, an impact on the academic and/or practitioner community), or (c) which journal is most “useful” (as in all the Whiteing/Menachof/Gibson/Hanna rankings – in all sorts of variations regarding order of authors) for teaching and research purposes. But honestly, as the Vellenga et al. rankings all discussed for a long time, the point of rankings is to have an impact on the evaluation of faculty – for promotions, merit pay etc.
Yet, it’s not as if schools would apply our rankings. One is that we may know “in the field” which journals we regard as best (which may vary a bit depending on geographical region and our background amongst the “three amigos“). The other is that universities and business schools scrap this knowledge and just go for impact factors. Now here’s the catch: most SCM journals have not been evaluated for an impact factor. Most haven’t even applied for an evaluation (which itself takes several years to do). This has the ridiculous effect that e.g. Supply Chain Management: an International Journal, or say, Transportation Research Part E are higher regarded by universities when evaluating their faculty than they’d be regarded by scholars in the field. This is not to say that they are bad journals, they are typically in the top 10 of rankings, but not in the top 5. As David Menachof pointed out when presenting the latest ranking, we are hired to do research in SCM, but not paid to do so…
I’m not sure where to go from here. One way could be to scrap impact factors and rankings altogether. Another, to quit the field. A third, to urge SCM journals to finally apply for an ISI evaluation. Journal editors, where art thou?
Gyöngyi
4 responses so far ↓
Lisa // November 29, 2007 at 07:12 |
Gyöngyi:
Just FYI– If you have talked to the editors of the various SCM journals, most HAVE applied at least once, and have been turned down. Many of the journal editorships have turned over in the past several years. I think all/most of these editors are applying again. I agree that it is important to do this in today’s academic environment. It seems to bring more legitimacy to a journal in the eyes of other fields—even if the impact factor is low.
Cheers,
Lisa
gyoengyi // November 29, 2007 at 09:09 |
Thanks Lisa, that’s really good to know. Let’s hope we get the impact factors soon! Otherwise it’s not publish or perish, but publish AND perish for our field…
Gyöngyi
SCM journal impact factors « Interorganisational - Supply Chain Management // April 22, 2008 at 08:25 |
[...] questions; no wonder our posts on rankings are among the most viewed ones (here’s the last one). Rankings of SCM journals also exist in abundance, based on surveys among scholars in the field, [...]
J.Ramsay // December 30, 2008 at 20:45 |
‘Logistics’ ‘Supply Management’ and the various other variants – let’s face it, these subject areas will probably never have the allure of Marketing or Finance, let alone Physics or Economics. To people outside of the subject area they reek too much of unglamorous oily rag activities like scheduling and transport. If you want to get a new business field established with at least a vague chance of attaining high status, I would suggest you opt for the mirror-image of Marketing – you have probably heard of it – ‘Purchasing’.
Currently deeply unfashionable it may be, but I think you will agree that the various supply/logistics alternatives tried in recent decades have proved deeply unsuccessful. I know that this message will not be welcomed by those whose current careers have been built upon those failed titles, but I think it would be wise to take a longer viewpoint than can be entertained by their personal interests. It is time to dump the current names and start afresh.
By the way, I say this as someone who teaches critical reasoning mainly in an Economics Department and thus have nothing to be gained or lost by any change of field title.
Happy New Year Everybody
JR