aero 2009: ranking agricultural economics journals

September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, MN

Ranking Agricultural Economics Journals

Hui Hua ChuaU.S. Documents, Journalism, Economics &

AFRE Librarian

Michigan State University

[email protected]


Overview

• Review of recently published Ag Econ journal rankings

• Discussion of (new) indices and resources for journal ranking


Why?

Journals still represent the most heavily-used research format in Agricultural Economics• 68% of citations in Ag Econ were to journal

articles (Zhang, 2007)

– Collection development • collection building

• serials review

– Used in departmental tenure and promotion processes• help faculty and graduate students identify journals for publication


General Observations

• Stated preference vs revealed preference (Harzing, 2009)

– Methodologically translates to surveys vs citation-based analysis– Rankings of Ag Econ journals generally follow this pattern

• Most citation-based rankings have relied on ISI’s citation data

– Less true for Ag Econ rankings

• Issues specific to Agricultural Economics– breadth of discipline (subject, geography)– small number of Ag Econ journals included in ISI SCI


Revealed Preference Rankings

• Olsen (1991)– Citations from 3 sources representing general

literature, research literature (AJAE) and Third World literature

• Dote and Letnes (1996)– AERO members surveyed to create an initial

list of journals, then surveyed on holdings



• Burton & Phimister (1996)– ranked 7 ISI Ag Econ journals– ISI citation data was basis of analysis– Data Envelopment Analysis: lower weight of self-

citations, control for journal longevity and size of journal

• Perry (1997)– 19 Ag Econ journals (14 not in SSCI)– Totaled citations from these 19 journals, then divided

citations for each year by number of articles published each year.



• Barrett et al (2000)– 10 journals in each JEL code C-R– Attempt to include the quality of citing journals.– Created list of citing subdisciplinary journals. Used

citations in these journals to create an unweighted ranking using SSCI data. Constructed weighted ranking by weighting citing journal by citation score from first ranking.

• Zhang (2007)– Citations from full-length articles from 2001-2005

issues of AJAE and JARE


Stated Preference Rankings

• Pochtrager (2009)– Large group of German, Austrian and Swiss Ag Econ experts

surveyed.– Contributors, reviewers and readers of the journals were

surveyed on different characteristics of the journals on a 1-10 scale.

– Output level based on respondents regarding scientific level of the articles. Impact based on responses on requirements for reviewers.

– Index created based on responses.


Major Ranking Indices

• ISI’s Impact Factor– Number of citations to articles from source journals in

a journal published in the previous 2 years divided by the total number of articles (original and review articles) published in the same journal in the same 2 years.

• Numerous critiques: small size of source database, all citations treated equally, omission of working papers, proceedings, data quality, article vs journal

– Still remains most “popular” and “credible”



• Eigenfactor – Eigenfactor Score and Article Influence Score– Eliminates self-citations, counts citations in both science and

social science journals and tries to account for citing journal quality.

– Iteratively calculates the importance of each journal in the citation network with a mathematical algorithm.

– Measures the importance of a citation by the influence of the citing journal divided by the total number of citations appearing in that journal.

– the Article Influence Score for a journal is proportional to the Eigenfactor divided by the number of articles.

– Part of ISI JCR but also available at http://www.eigenfactor.org



• H-Index– Initially used for articles & authors but can be

extended to any dataset– proponents claim that the h-index reflects both the

number of publications (“productivity”) and the number of citations per publication (“impact”)

– A journal’s h-index number is where h is the number of articles or papers with at least h citations.

– Dynamic ranking, especially as used in RePEc


New Resources for Journal Ranking

• Google Scholar citation database

• SCOPUS citation database

• Modified PageRank technology



• SCIMAGO: http://www.scimagojr.com – Universities of Granada, Extremadura, and Carlos III in Madrid– Uses SCOPUS citation database and PageRank technology– Provides SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) indicator and H-Index– SCR= the average number of weighted citations received in the

selected year by the documents published in the selected journal in the three previous years. Attempts to account for citation quality.

– AJAE http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=00029092&tip=iss&clean=0

http://www.scimagojr.com/



http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=00029092&tip=iss&clean=0











• Journal-Ranking.com– Red Jasper and HK University of Science and

Technology– Uses modified PageRank technology and ISI’s SCI

citation database– Provides Journal Influence Index and Paper Influence

Index– Allows users to assign weights to determine citing

journal quality and time period considered



• Publish or Perish software: http://www.harzing.com/resources.htm - Uses Google Scholar citation database

http://www.harzing.com/resources.htm


Conclusion

• New tools and resources are promising

• Continuing challenge of the diversity of Agricultural Economics

aero 2009: ranking agricultural economics journals

Education

aero meeting minneapolis

h citations

journals hindex number

initiallist of journals

source journals ina

quality of citing journals

aero members

thenumber of citations