[AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List Revision

[Prof. Paul Benjamin LOWRY]

That is a good question, which reveals more problems with their process:

The FT wants deans to suggest 5 journals to add to the list and 5 journals
to drop from the list. The journals that are "under review" for dropping
consideration are the following:

- Academy of Management Perspectives  
- Academy of Management Review  
- Administrative Science Quarterly  
- California Management Review  
- Econometrica  
- Harvard Business Review 
- Journal of Political Economy  
- Journal of the American Statistical Association  
- Quarterly Journal of Economics  
- RAND Journal of Economics  

FT is somewhat opaque about why they are "reviewing" these 10 journals.
Supposedly, it is for low volume of publication in b-schools or low impact
factor. Hence, it is baffling AMR is on this list. It is also odd that some
lower-quality journals are not on this "review" list, such as J. of Business
Ethics (impact = 1.32), Contemporary Accounting Research (impact 1.26),
Review of Accounting Studies (impact = 1.39). Few b-schools treat these
three journals as A journals. Nonetheless, this is a clear example of some
of the problems of deans "voting" on a list that is set up by a news
organization.

Regardless, I think a strong case can be made to drop some journals from the
above list: First both HBR and SMR are hybrid practitioner magazines that
are more akin to CACM or IEEE Computer in style and scientific quality. They
do not follow traditional peer-review and editorial practices, nor do they
follow scientific standards of theory, evidence, analysis, and
reporting/disclosure on studies.

Moreover, the Journal of the American Statistical Association is not a
business-discipline journal, so it is also an easy target.

Finally, depending on one's business school (and the role of economics in
it), one can further argue dropping several of the economics journals simply
because of poor fit and volume. For example, the Quarterly Journal of
Economics, Econometrica, RAND Journal of Economics, are definitely top
economics journals, but most of their foci are outside of business
disciplines. Thus, few business scholars ever publish in these, so at a
large number of b-schools there is a serious fit issue. Listing these is
somewhat akin to having "Science" or "ACM Computing Surveys" on the list.

Hopefully this information helps. Good luck out there!

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: AISWorld [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of Aron
Lindberg
Sent: Wednesday, June 8, 2016 8:28 AM
To: Dennis, Alan R. <ardennis at indiana.edu>; 'Templeton, Gary'
<GTempleton at business.msstate.edu>; aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List
Revision

Hi All,

Is there any information available on what the contents of the survey are?
How will the Dean's prioritize the journals? Can they leave free-form text
comments?

If we can provide a set of "talking points" to our Deans, we may be able to
have a stronger impact on this process.

Best,
Aron

________________________________________
From: AISWorld <aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org> on behalf of Dennis, Alan
R. <ardennis at indiana.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 7, 2016 8:17 PM
To: 'Templeton, Gary'; aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List
Revision

We just finished examining the results of the AIS Senior Scholars Journal
Basket survey.  We got 975 responses. MISQ and ISR were one and two.  JAIS
was three and JMIS was four, although there was no significant difference
between JAIS and JMIS.

So I strongly recommend MISQ, ISR, JAIS, JMIS, and a journal of your choice.

Alan

-----Original Message-----
From: AISWorld [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of
Templeton, Gary
Sent: Monday, June 6, 2016 11:27 PM
To: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: [AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List Revision

IS faculty,

Financial Times is adjusting their list of top 45 business journals. Deans
across the globe are being surveyed for journals that should be on the list.
IS faculty across the world are making suggestions to their deans about the
proper contents of the list.


How many IS journals should be on the list? The current list contains 2
(MISQ and ISR) of the 45, or 4.4%. My recent publication with Bruce Lewis on
business journal fairness addresses this issue. According to AACSB faculty
data, 9.45% of business faculty are in the IS discipline. This translates to
4.25 (9.45% X 45) journal slots for the IS discipline.


Because FT45 is largely a public relations venue and not scientific, the IS
discipline should respond accordingly. We should certainly have at least 4
on the list, but that assumes it is a scientific list. I think we should ask
for 5 for fear of selling ourselves short.


Bruce and I have published two rankings (one IS and the other all business)
that summarize samples of institutional lists (those used in "practice"). We
found strong evidence that our field views JMIS to be the clear third most
esteemed journal in our field.


At a minimum, I think the vast majority would agree that MISQ, ISR and JMIS
should be in the top three. However, only submitting 3 (or 4) to our deans,
may not serve our field well. I suspect there would be more argument about
#4 and #5. It would help if members of our research community could come to
an agreement and pose this top 5 to our deans.


I wonder if our group could come to an agreement in such a short time, and
we could make recommendations to our deans in a uniform way.


Gary


Reference:

Templeton, G.F. & Lewis, B.R., 2015. "Fairness in the Institutional
Valuation of Business Journals," MIS Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 523-539.
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