[AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List Revision

Wed Jun 8 22:37:24 EDT 2016

I usually don't like to read apologies for private messages accidentally sent to the entire community (by responding to the wrong message while walking). However, mine made no sense outside of a small group of people discussing this issue, and furthermore, there was a typo in my message. So this one was particularly embarrassing. So here's the apology: Sorry.

Anyway, a person asked me what BlueMail is. It is an email app for Android that thankfully enables a unified in-box, using a black screen and white text, both in the app and in the resizable widget. It is easier on the eyes in a dark room and easier on the batteries.

There must be dozens of private discussions about this topic, which we should all take very seriously (the FT45 list, not the Droid app).

DG

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Dennis F. Galletta                      Professor of Business Administration
University of Pittsburgh                 and Director, Katz Doctoral Program
282a Mervis Hall                            Katz Graduate School of Business
Phone +1 412-648-1699                                  Pittsburgh, PA  15260
E-mail: galletta @                                       Fax +1 412-624-3633
        katz.pitt.edu                       homepage: www.pitt.edu/~galletta
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-----Original Message-----
From: AISWorld [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of Prof. Paul Benjamin LOWRY
Sent: Wednesday, June 8, 2016 9:16 PM
To: 'Aron Lindberg' <alindber at stevens.edu>; '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

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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