: How Much Does Journal Reputation Tell Us About the Academic Interest and Relevance of Economic Research GAIA-

[Eugene Garfield]

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TITLE:          How Much Does Journal Reputation Tell Us About the

                Academic Interest and Relevance of Economic Research?
Empirical Analysis

                and Implications for Environmental Economic Research
(Article, English)

AUTHOR:         Schlapfer, F

SOURCE:         GAIA-ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY 19

                (2). 2010. p.140-145 OEKOM VERLAG, MUNICH

 

SEARCH TERM(S):  JOURNAL  item_title

 

KEYWORDS:       citation index; incentives; interdisciplinarity;

                publication; research evaluation; scientometrics

KEYWORDS+:       CITATION INDEXES

 

ABSTRACT:       Unlike in other disciplines, research output in
economics

is commonly measured based on the disciplinary reputation of the
journals in which an author has published. Here, I examine how much
output measures based on journal reputation tell us about the academic
interest and relevance of economic papers as measured by frequency of
citation.

Using data from the 2008 Hondelsblatt ranking of economists in German
speaking countries and interdisciplinary citation data from the Web of
Science, I find that researcher scores based on journal reputation
explain only about 30 percent of the variation (variance) in article
citations. When the top 10 (20) percent of the researchers according to
journal reputation scores are excluded, the percentage of explained
variation in citation frequency drops to 8 (3) percent. Furthermore,
using environmental economics journals as an example, I show that the
traditional output measures strongly discourage applied and
interdisciplinary economic research. The findings confirm that the
traditional output measures provide incentives for narrow economic work
even if that work is of interest to only few other researchers.

Responsible hiring committees and funding institutions should take these
problems seriously and re-consider existing standards in the evaluation
of economic research.

 

AUTHOR ADDRESS: F Schlapfer, Univ Zurich, Socioecon Inst, Hottingerstr
10,

                CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland

 

[ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 615QW 00012)  ISSN: 0940-5550

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Eugene Garfield, PhD. email:  garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu
<mailto:garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu>  
home page: www.eugenegarfield.org <http://www.eugenegarfield.org/> 
Tel: 610-525-8729 Fax: 610-560-4749

Chairman Emeritus, ThomsonReuters Scientific (formerly ISI)
1500 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA 19130-4067

Editor Emeritus, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com
<http://www.the-scientist.com/>    
400 Market St. Suite 330 Philadelphia, PA 19106-2535

Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology
(ASIS&T) www.asist.org <http://www.asist.org/>  

 

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