Impact of Lower Rated Journals on Economists' Judgments of Publication Lists: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Nattavudh Powdthavee, Yohanes Riyanto and Jack Knetsch

No 10752, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Publications in leading journals are widely known to have a positive impact on economists' judgments of the value of authors' contributions to the literature and on their professional reputations. Very little attention has been given, however, to the impacts of the addition of publications in lower rated journals on such judgments. In our main tests, we asked subsamples of economists in 44 universities throughout the world to rate either a publication list with only higher rated journals or a list with all of these but with additional publications in nearly as many respected but lower rated journals. Our primary finding was that the inclusion of lower rated journals had a statistically significant negative impact on these economists' judgments of the value of the author's contribution. To the extent that such judgments may influence research and publication strategies our findings imply negative implications on social welfare.

Keywords: lower ranked journals; publication; judgment bias; less-is-better effect; resume (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-sea and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Psychology, 2018, 66, 33-44

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Working Paper: Impact of Lower Rated Journals on Economists' Judgments of Publication Lists: Evidence from a Survey Experiment (2017)
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