A BEJEAP Topics article.

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.

Submitted: April 9, 2009 · Accepted: July 8, 2009 · Published: August 30, 2009

Recommended Citation

Wall, Howard J. (2009) "Don't Get Skewed Over by Journal Rankings," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 (Topics), Article 34.
DOI: 10.2202/1935-1682.2280
Available at: http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol9/iss1/art34