1. Ranking Agricultural
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, Economics Journals
Hui Hua Chua
U.S. Documents, Journalism, Economics &
AFRE Librarian
Michigan State University
chua@mail.lib.msu.edu
2. September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, Overview
• Review of recently published Ag Econ
journal rankings
• Discussion of (new) indices and resources
for journal ranking
3. September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, 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
4. General Observations
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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
5. Revealed Preference Rankings
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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
6. Revealed Preference Rankings
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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.
7. Revealed Preference Rankings
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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
8. Stated Preference Rankings
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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.
9. Major Ranking Indices
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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”
10. Major Ranking Indices
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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
11. Major Ranking Indices
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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
12. New Resources for Journal
Ranking
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • Google Scholar citation database
• SCOPUS citation database
• Modified PageRank technology
13. New Resources for Journal
Ranking
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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
14. New Resources for Journal
Ranking
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • 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
15. New Resources for Journal
Ranking
September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, • Publish or Perish software:
http://www.harzing.com/resources.htm
- Uses Google Scholar citation database
16. September 24, 2009 - AERO Meeting - Minneapolis, Conclusion
• New tools and resources are promising
• Continuing challenge of the diversity of
Agricultural Economics
Editor's Notes
Note about own methods used: reviewed Ag Econ journal rankings; did not attempt comprehensive review of Econ journal rankings. 1990 onwards. Environmental economics journal rankings recently.
Harzing classifies journal rankings in general into 2 categories. Useful typology that generally applies to Ag Econ. Academic community ranks on basis of expert judgement
Actual publication behavior generally based on citation rates
A lot more citation-based studies than stated preference studies
Generally though not always, based on ISI’s database of journal citations and impact factors
Olsen attempts to capture the breadth of the field, as well as include material published outside the Anglo-American world.
Dote/Letnes: borderline between revealed and stated preference. First pass uses expert judgement. Attempt again to get comprehensive group of journals, not just.
