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)

Cited Reference Searching

In researching a topic it is often very useful to find articles that have cited an article of particular interest. There are two library databases with good support for this cited reference searching: Web of Knowledge (aka Web of Science) and Scopus. Taking an example:

Mouzas, S., Henneberg, S., and Naude, P. (2007) Trust and reliance in business relationships. European Journal of Marketing, 41 (9-10), 1016-1032.

Web of Knowledge – (click to expand)

Web of Knowledge  (Web of Science) shows that this article has been cited by 12 articles that are themselves covered by Web of Science.

It also offers the chance to look for related articles – those that are similar to this one because of the references they share.

These features can be used to trace the development of research ideas through shared references and reference chains: paperA cited_by paperB cited_by paperC cited_by …

Note: Web of Knowledge  does not give direct access to full-text but these are mostly easily reachable through the purple FindIt@UML links.

Scopus (click to expand)

Scopus shows that this article has been cited by 17 articles that are covered by Scopus. The details are in the Cited by since 1996 section on the right hand side.

Scopus will often provide a greater number of cited-by articles  since it  covers a greater range of business and managenent journals. See  Journal database comparison

Like Web of Knowledge, Scopus also offers links to related documents based on the references they share and access to full text through  the purple FindIt@UML links. Both databases  also offer the chance to setup an alert when a particular article is cited by another in the database.

Google scholar will give an even greater number of cited by resources – 39 for this example. This is because Google scholar will include everything where it can find the full text or bibliometric information on the web – articles, books, conference papers, working papers, reports, theses. In contrast Web of Knowledge  and Scopus only include cited by from respected academic publications that qualify for inclusion in the respective database.

From Manchester Business Answers 24/7 (FAQ)  - Where can I do cited reference searching?

Finally I must acknowledge Dave Hirst’s post on the Everything Engineering blog that partly inspired this one - How to track the citations? Web of Science versus Google Scholar.

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.

Literature searching

We have updated some FAQ entries related to literature searching:

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

A standard literature search involves an actively searching e-journal databases. An alternative approach is to use current awareness services:  set up one or more alerts or RSS filters for your topic and get the latest research sent to you.

Whatever the scale of your literature search you need to consider how you are going to manage the references you gather. You can use a reference management software package (e.g. EndNote, EndNote Web, Zotero, …) or keep your own “master file” with the full citation information for all your references.

If you have suggestions for making literature searching more effective and efficient, please leave a comment.

Additional notes:

It has proved surprisingly hard to find  journal articles about literature searching for business and management.  A couple are included in the answer, “Where can I find information about doing a literature search?“ If you are looking for something short and readable, the article “Conducting a literature review” (Rowley and Slack, 2004) aims to provide pragmatic guidance to students rather than contribute to academic research on literature searching.

Rowley, J. and Slack, F. (2004) Conducting a literature review, Management Research News, 27 (6), 31 – 39. Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01409170410784185 [Accessed 09 Nov. 2010].

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)