Entries categorized as ‘Journal ranking’
“Meet the editors” at Euroma: JOM and (the new) IJOPM editors declared in unison that they were most interested in theory-driven, empirically based papers. In other words, nothing that does not take its parameters at least from an actual empirical study, and nothing that just suggest yet another (consultancy) ‘methodology’. Well, IJOPM did add their quest for more conceptual pieces that would challenge existing frameworks. But while these two are trying to move up in academic quality, rigor, and citation indices, another journal has been introduced with the aim of being a solid “B” journal: OM Review. Though as Andi Smart pointed out, not as if IJOPM had ever rejected a paper with the suggestion to submit it to JOM instead 
What else was new? Euroma 2009 had a number of special tracks, but the most overwhelming in number of papers was the one on ops mgmt in healthcare. It ran through the entire conference and even had parallel healthcare sessions.
Gyöngyi
PS Please post the link to OM Review if you find it – I haven’t come across any direct link, just many references to the journal.
Categories: Academic journals · Conferences · Journal ranking · Operations management
Authors are well advised to check out editorial policies on review processes. While you may assume sending a paper to a international “peer reviewed” journal assures you of a blind review process, some even “better” journals (such as the International Journal of Production Economics) only subscribe to a single-blind review – i.e. authors do not know who their reviewers are but reviewers certainly do know who the authors are. This is not to say there wouldn’t be good arguments to present for single-blind or even open reviews, the question is just why this is not openly stated in the journal’s editorial policy… So this is not blind, it’s just candid. More room for ring-a-ring-o’-roses. Nobody said it was easy to be a scientist
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic journals · Journal ranking · Operations management · Research & Methodology
Finally, it’s out, the Menachof/Gibson/Hanna/Whiteing update on SCM journal rankings. Some of their findings will be interesting to read to the researchers who just sent out a survey on the ranking of transportation journals Other findings confirm previous studies, with the trio of JBL, IJPDLM and IJLM being on top for research, and with a number of reviews (i.e. more practitioner-oriented journals) leading the teaching bit. A convergence of the three amigos is also to be seen, with OM journals “entering” the list. Does it mean we agree on SCM even though we come from different backgrounds?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic journals · Journal ranking · Supply Chain Management
Ring a ring o’ roses… This is actually the title of a fascinating article on how to play the game of getting published, getting cited, publishing in “quality” journals etc. It is enlightening how little the quality of an article actually matters, and how we prefer where an article has been published over what it actually contains.
As for journal rankings, it’s a vicious circle of them being based on “quality” people publishing in a journal who submit their paper to the journal only because its a “quality” journal. And another vicious circle of journal ranking being based on (self?)-citations and on the inclusion of both the cited and citing journal article in the SSCI (otherwise your citation is just not counted). Then there is also the self-fulfilling prophecy of higher journal rankings leading to more submissions leading to higher rejection rates and an even higher journal ranking…
Just when is this academic bubble going to burst? The authors (Stuart Macdonald and Jacqueline Kam) suggest a game of tinkerbell to deal with it… and have been quite successful in the gamesmanship they criticise – this very article got them high publication points.
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic journals · Journal ranking · Research & Methodology
January 22, 2009 · 1 Comment
It seems that academia has followed the “publish or perish” mantra since time immemorial. (Which reminds me, there is even a programme called “Publish or Perish” that analyses academic citations via Google Scholar).
But just how do publications in academic journals (and the quality of these journals vs. number of publications) relate to getting promoted in academia? AMA has just opened a discussion group around a recent article in the Journal of Marketing that revisits this question. In this article, Seggie and Griffith (2009) draw a link not only between publications and promotion in academia (which in logistics has been established in a number of Vellenga et al. papers) but also between publications in “good” journals (i.e. journal rankings) and promotions at/to “good” universities (i.e. university rankings). As for the marketing discipline, it appears that scholars from highly ranked academic institutions publish more in the top marketing journals.
My question would be whether this finding could be replicated in SCM. One of the problems here is the persistence of functional silos in academia. We have rankings in logistics, purchasing, operations management, … (you name it) but as Kovács, Spens and Vellenga (2008) found, these “academic tribes” differ substantially in their views on journal rankings. What is more, which are the “top academic institutions” in our discipline…?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic journals · Journal ranking · Supply Chain Management
Yesterday I received a new kind of newsletter, the IJPDLM Update. One of the most interesting news relates to the common efforts of IJLM and IJPDLM to get a Thomson ISI evaluation (JBL has started the process a bit earlier). This is good news for the academic community that more and more depends on such evaluations for e.g. faculty ranking and merit pay. But it also depends on the academic community to support the evaluations of the journals – thus the call is for active recommendations of the journals to Thomson ISI. Click on this link to recommend them!
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic journals · Journal ranking · Logistics · Supply Chain Management
For a variety of reasons, academics are always interested in journal rankings, so here is yet another one to add to the list of ranking articles we discussed on this blog, by Kovács, Spens and Vellenga (see the article here), published in the latest number of the International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications. The take on ranking issues is a bit different, as the article discusses e.g. open access publishing, regional differences in rankings, as well as communities of logistics researchers and their rankings. Apart from the fact that it is IJPDLM that tops Nordic rankings (which has in fact been confirmed by Arlbjørn, Jonsson and Johansen), it is interesting to look at the correlations between particular communities (here the ones sticking out are transportation, ops mgmt, and logistics) across which researchers do not deem each other’s journals relevant and/or plainly do not know them. So much for the three amigos; though I do still hope Árni is right about SCM as a “discipline” may bridge the gap between them. It’s definitely time to break down the functional silos within our discipline, not just in companies!
Gyöngyi
PS. Once done, someone could actually answer the question of “what is a functional silo and why is it important” on WikiAnswers.
Categories: Journal ranking · Logistics · Operations management · Research & Methodology · 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
Categories: Academic journals · Academic publications · Journal ranking · Supply Chain Management
The latest PhD comic made me think – what’s the legacy of (my) academic research going to be? If lucky, there will be some articles people read and cite; but already now, the readership of this blog surpasses all potential readership of any academic article; pretty comparable to Jorge Cham’s impact factor
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic publications · Journal ranking · Socks and sandals
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
Categories: Academic journals · Academic publications · Journal ranking · Supply Chain Management
