An Examination of the Reliability of Prestigious Scholarly Journals: Evidence and Implications for Decision‐Makers

Andrew Oswald

Economica, 2007, vol. 74, issue 293, 21-31

Abstract: Scientific‐funding bodies are increasingly under pressure to use journal rankings to measure research quality. Hiring and promotion committees routinely hear an equivalent argument: ‘this is important work because it is to be published in prestigious journal X’. But how persuasive is such an argument? This paper examines data on citations to articles published 25 years ago. It finds that it is better to write the best article published in an issue of a medium‐quality journal such as the OBES than all four of the worst four articles published in an issue of an elite journal like the AER. Decision‐makers need to understand this.

Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (168)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0335.2006.00575.x

Related works:
Working Paper: An Examination of the Reliability of Prestigious Scholarly Journals: Evidence and Implications for Decision-makers (2006)
Working Paper: An Examination of the Reliability of Prestigious Scholarly Journals: Evidence and Implications for Decision-makers (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:econom:v:74:y:2007:i:293:p:21-31

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0013-0427

Access Statistics for this article

Economica is currently edited by Frank Cowell, Tore Ellingsen and Alan Manning

More articles in Economica from London School of Economics and Political Science Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().