Wall HJ " Don't get skewed over by journal rankings" B E JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS & POLICY 9(1), Article 34, 2009

[Eugene Garfield]

E-mail Addresses: wall at stls.frb.org  

AUTHOR(s): Wall HJ (Wall, Howard J.)  

TITLE : Don't Get Skewed Over by Journal Rankings 

SOURCE : B E JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS & POLICY    
Volume: 9    Issue: 1  Article Number: 34    Published: 2009    

Abstract: 
Nearly all journal rankings in economics use some weighted average of 
citations to calculate a journal's impact. These rankings are often used, 
formally or informally, to help assess the publication success of 
individual economists or institutions. Although ranking methods and 
opinions are legion, scant attention has been paid to the usefulness of any 
ranking as representative of the many articles published in a journal. 
First, because the distributions of citations across articles within a 
journal are seriously skewed, and the skewness differs across journals, the 
appropriate measure of central tendency is the median rather than the mean. 
Second, large shares of articles in the highest-ranked journals are cited 
less frequently than typical articles in much-lower-ranked journals. 

Reprint Address: Wall, HJ (reprint author), Fed Reserve Bank St Louis, POB 
442, St Louis, MO 63166 USA  

Addresses: 
1. Fed Reserve Bank St Louis, St Louis, MO 63166 USA  

E-mail Addresses: wall at stls.frb.org  

Publisher: BERKELEY ELECTRONIC PRESS, 2809 TELEGRAPH AVENUE, STE 202, 
BERKELEY, CA 94705 USA  

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2009014A FED RES BAN