Journal Ranking – marketing

There are several sources of academic journal rankings that can be used to identify “top” journals in an area. See FAQ - Where can I find a ranking and rating of business and management journals? for more detail.

The journal ranking data for 2011 is the latest available. Based on previous years, the Journal Citation Reports (2012), including Impact Factors 2012, will be available around the end of June 2013.

Using Marketing as an example:

ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide (last updated Nov 2010) has a Marketing section with five journals identified as “grade four” (the highest)

• Journal of Marketing (ISSN 0022-2429)
• Journal of Marketing Research (ISSN 0022-2437)
• Journal of Consumer Research (ISSN 0093-5301)
• Marketing Science (ISSN 0732-2399)
• Journal of Retailing (ISSN 0022-4359)

SJR SCImago Journal and Country Rank – Journal Ranking:
Area Business, Management and Accounting, Category Marketing, Country All, Order by H Index, Year 2011 (based in Scopus data) gives the following first five

• Journal of Marketing (ISSN - 00222429)
• Administrative Science Quarterly (ISSN - 00018392)
• Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (ISSN - 00920703)
• Journal of Marketing Research (ISSN - 00222437)
• Journal of Consumer Research (ISSN - 00935301)

For more on the SJR and SNIP journal metrics goto http://www.journalmetrics.com/

The ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Reports (2011 JCR Social Science Edition) do not have marketing as a separate category, but Journal of Marketing, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Retailing and Journal of Marketing Research are all in the top 20 for subject category Business ranked by Impact Factor.

Also from Journal Citation Reports (2011) Top 10 journals in Management, Finance and Economics from INSEAD blog.

Eigenfactor claims to rank journals in a similar way to Google ranking websites.

• Eigenfactor ranking for ISI category Business - there is no marketing category but several marketing journals are at the top of this category.

See also previous post – Journal Rankings http://bizlib247.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/journal-rankings/ (Oct 2010)

Research awareness and dissemination

Looking to find related research?
The other side of this coin is to consider how you could disseminate your research findings.

Academic journals

Getting your research published in a academic journals is fundamental to academic research. Peer review provides a guarantee of the quality of your work. In general, the higher the journal ranking the better: this will improve the chance of others finding and citing your work, and help you get an academic job/promotion.

In looking at related research you can use journal rankings as one approach to filtering a large set of “might be interesting related” papers. You can also use cited reference searching to find out other papers that have sighted your key papers.

• Where can I do cited reference searching?
• Keeping up to date – journal citation and current awareness services web page

 Institutional and subject repositories

Manchester eScholar is the University of Manchester’s institutional repository and a primary dissemination route for all University of Manchester research. You can search Manchester eScholar directly or the University research directory, which is based on the data in eScholar.

SSRN (Social Sciences Research Network) is an eLibrary with over 300,000 full-text papers. This includes working papers that later get further developed into academic journal papers.

If there is a research group, or an individual, whose research is closely related to yours then try to search their institutional repository and/or working papers.

• Where can I find research in business and finance done at Manchester Business School?
• Where can I find working papers?
• Finding working papers – Judge Business School Library blog post (26 Mar 2012).

Social media: blogs, twitter, …

There is growing interest in the use of social media in the dissemination of research.

• Your favourite academic tweeters (including business and management list) LSE Impact of Social Sciences (2 Sept 2011)
• Twitter for academic research – Judge Business School Library – New Media for Researchers (10 Feb 2012)
• Examples of academic and research blogs -  Judge Business School Library – New Media for Researchers (18 May 2011)
• Academic bloggers in business and economics - Business & Economics Information Solutions (Warwick Library) (15 Dec 2011)

You should certainly consider social media as a medium for research dissemination. Browse what others have done and decide what is right for you. One common message is to think of social media as enabling a conversation about research ideas and findings.

Surprisingly (to me at least) blogs do not seem to be an efficient way of finding out about current research in business and management. There are some interesting blogs, (e.g. Leaders We Deserve and Whitehall Watch from MBS academics) but these can be hard to find and often focus on commenting on current events from an academic perspective rather than on research.  [There are of course also several interesting blogs from business school libraries.]

Perhaps social media is all about building a network of contacts – people who might lead you to interesting idea you would otherwise overlook. It is not a replacement for the traditional techniques for finding related research but a complementary technique.

Final tip from the FAQ (Manchester Business Answers 24/7)

• Where can I find information about doing a literature search?

Which business and management journal database is best?

The following graphic from JISC-ADAT (Academic Database Assesment Tool) illustrates why there is no definitive answer to questions like:  

• Is ABI Inform (Proquest) or Business Source Premier (EBSCO) better?

The ADAT screenshot below shows the results of comparing:

• ABI Inform (Proquest) – over 3000 business and management publications – many in full-text
• Business Source Premier (EBSCO) – over 6000 business publications – many in full-text
• Scopus – over 18,000 top journals (all subjects) bibliographic information only

Journal database comparison from JISC ADAT - Click on image and then select ABI/INFORM, Business Source Premier and Scopus to re-create

Comparing ABI Inform and Business Source Premier: While there is an overlap between these two, searching just one of these databases will ignore a large number of publications/titles that is available in the other.

Comparing ABI Inform, Business Source Premier and Scopus: Most top academic journals are covered by Scopus, but these are just part of what is available through ABI Inform and Business Source Premier. Even considering just the publications/titles covered by Scopus, only about half of the titles are covered by both ABI Inform and Business Source Premier.

Related Manchester Business Answers 24/7 (FAQ) Questions:

• Why are there different databases providing journal articles?
• Where can I find journal articles for my research topic?
• Where can I find information about doing a literature search?

It is best to explore different journal databases – you will probably find what is best depends on the type of results you are seeking.

Getting Published – advice from Emerald

Simon Linacre and Ruth Bailey from Emerald recently visited MBS for a presentation/workshop on getting published (and understanding journal rankings).

The first part described how articles are handled from a publisher’s perspective and offered several important tips for getting published.

• Consider your reader – what will make your paper interesting, clear, relevant and memorable for them
• Consider your potential reader – most people only see the title (and abstract) of your paper through a search engine - Will your target readers want to find out more?
• Consider your editor and publisher – follow the author guidelines!

The second part discussed where to publish and specifically the influence of journal rankings.

• In the UK the forthcoming REF research assessment will use either ISI (Thomson Journal Citation Reports) or Scopus (Elsevier).
• ISI (available through Web of Knowledge) covers 12,000 journals (67% science, 21% social science, 12% humanities)
  Scopus covers 18,000 (40% science, 30% social science, 30% humanities)
• Some countries only consider ISI journals, Australia is compiling its own index, UK has the ABS (Association of Business Schools) ranking list, while in the US Scopus and ISI have limited impact.
• There is growing use of Google scholar as a source of publication impact data but it will be some time before this is an influence at the national level.

Simon’s advice was to be aware that universities are very interested where their staff and students publish as it influences their ranking, but remember that it is your career (you may move somewhere with a different ranking).

Among the discussions, the most discussed topic was the influence of open access publishing and institutional repositories. This is going to have an influence over the next few years. Emerald like most publishers is watching how things develop.

Related FAQ questions:

• Where can I find a ranking and rating of business and management journals? (updated 27/03/11)
• Search results for Emerald

Journal Rankings

Journal rankings are often used to identify the top research journals in a field.

We have updated the FAQ answer:
Where can I find a ranking and rating of business and management journals?
to make the distinction between general rankings and those specific to business and managment clearer.

Journal ranking is not perfect and there is significant research into its effectiveness. For example, the Journal Citation Report (JCR) rankings are strict in terms of the journals covered (with natural and life sciences better covered than social sciences) so journal focussed on new emerging areas do not score well.

Brief demo video http://screencast.com/t/gHdnrEvcwH accessing JCR rankings through Web of Knowledge (aka Web of Science)