Interorganisational - Supply Chain Management

Journal rankings are always sensitive 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, or on citation indices. As for the latter, many universities have gone over to follow the Thomson ISI ratings to evaluate the publications of their faculty. But while several journals are now in fact in the process of getting an ISI rating, an awful lot of SCM journals have not received one yet. In the meantime, here are some (alternative) citation indices to look at. The “H-index” has been developed as an alternative, even Google Scholar has come out with it’s own calculations. The International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Journal of Business Logistics, and the Journal of Supply Chain Management get quite impressive ratings in Harzing and van der Wal’s (2007) report.

Another interesting ranking is the SCImago journal and country rank. While SCM journals figure just under the mixed “business” category, it’s fun to look at the country ranks.

All these rankings and ratings boil down to one question: is ISI really just the only one universities should look at? And which consequences does such a decision bear for SCM scholars? Yet, having discussed this at several conferences already, the answer from publishing houses is that it’s up to scholars to promote their journals to be included in the ISI. If enough people recommend a journal to be included in the evaluation, Thomson ISI will take it in. So, let’s start the process of getting our journals in and recommend them!

Gyöngyi

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