Rankings of academic journals in accounting, finance, and information system
Perception from the college chairpersons
The Authors
Ji Wu, Lincoln University, Lincoln, New Zealand
Qian Hao, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA
Michelle Y.M. Yao, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is report the importance of research publications for the tenure promotion and for faculty in accounting, finance, and information system (IS) areas, developing valid criteria for the assessment of quality in related journals is necessary.
Design/methodology/approach – Existing rankings are usually based on a survey among faculty members, while ignoring the chairs' critical role in tenure evaluation. This paper uses department chairs' responses to a survey asking to assess relative journal quality, and hence provides quantitative standards to measure research productivity. The rankings are primarily obtained by the familiarity-rank position index method. Different sets of rankings for the decision-makers in universities, with various requirements for research are provide.
Findings – It is found that the rankings in accounting and finance areas are consistent with the prior research, but the rankings in the IS have changed significantly. This difference to the rapid growth in the field of IS is attributed. The robustness check also corroborates the ranking lists.
Originality/value – In addition, this paper reports not only a comprehensive ranking list including most journals in accounting, finance, and IS areas, but also separate rankings in each field.
Article Type:
Research paper
Keyword(s):
Publications; Research; Accounting; Finance; Information systems.
Journal:
International Journal of Accounting and Information Management
Volume:
17
Number:
1
Year:
2009
pp:
66-105
Copyright ©
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN:
1834-7649
1 Introduction
The system of tenure has long been a defining feature of employment in the higher education sector of the USA and some other countries. It is recognized that there is no single model that can prescribe competence and excellence, but research and publication are some of the most important criteria in tenure awards evaluation across all disciplines and all universities. A natural question is how to evaluate the contribution of a research paper? Papers in various journals are assigned different weights in tenure evaluation based on the quality of the journals (Reinstein and Calderon, 2006). The common practice is to give more points for the research published in leading journals, and fewer points for the papers accepted by the lower tier journals. Therefore, assessing the quality of academic journals is very important to both universities and individual faculty.
The objective of this paper is to use the academic chairs responses to a survey about accounting, finance, and information system (IS) journals in order to assess the relative journal quality, and provide a quantitative standard to caliber faculty research. Our survey was conducted among department chairs in business fields, including accounting, finance, and IS areas. Although promotion and tenure decisions involve faculty peers as well as administrators, academic administration plays a more significant role in this process than the faculty peers (Fairweather and Rhoads, 1995). Realizing the importance of the chairs' role in tenure promotion, we focused on their opinions in this study.
This study obtains 460 responses from college deans and chairs of universities from all over the world. We find that the Journal of Accounting Research (JAR) (Table I), The Accounting Review (TAR), Journal of Finance (JF), Journal of Accounting and Economics (JAE,), Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), MIS Quarterly (MISQ), Management Science (MS), Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), Academy of Management Review (AMR), and Decision Sciences (DS) are the top ten journals among 195 journals included in the survey. Besides, the above comprehensive ranking, we also provide the assessment of journal quality in each individual area. To corroborate our ranking list, we present a positive relationship between our rankings and the response rate, and a positive relation between the rankings and the tenure promotion rate. Finally, we found that journals that have a higher response rate are ranked on a higher position than journals that have a low response rate if we use geometric mean method to rank them.
This paper contributes to the extant research in the following aspects. First, the ranking is based on the perceptions of the academic chairs in the business fields. As the primary judges in the tenure promotion decision-making process, their opinions are more influential. Thus, the ranking based on their opinions can provide more useful guidance to the faculty – the party who is evaluated – about where to submit their papers.
Second, this study provides journal rankings in multiple fields, including accounting, finance and IS. Prior studies investigate the quality of either accounting journals or finance journals. However, modern research is becoming more related with each other, and interdisciplinary research is more prosperous than ever before. Taking this trend into consideration, besides assessing journals in accounting, finance, and IS field, respectively, we also mix journals and rank them together. In fact, many business schools combine these three areas into one department, thus a comprehensive ranking based on the same criteria can promote fairness and objectivity, thus facilitating the tenure promotion evaluation.
Third, comparing our rankings with the prior rankings in the extant literature, we find that our journal rankings in accounting and finance fields are consistent with previous research. However, the rankings of IS journals are significantly different. We attribute this fact to the rapid development in the IS area, and suggest that the chairs be more cautious in judging the IS publications.
Fourth, the survey respondents are not constrained to the USA and UK academic chairs, but include the administrators in universities world-wide that implement the tenure system, including universities in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Singapore, etc. Our “global ranking” of business journals can thus be a good guide not only to business schools located in the USA, but also those outside the USA.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 briefly reviews prior literature on the rankings of accounting, finance, and IS journals. Section 3 describes the methodology applied in the paper, focusing particularly on the approaches to rank journals. Reports and analyses of the results are provided in Section 4, followed by a concluding section discussing the relevance and limitations of the results.
2 Literature review
The importance of academic journal articles in tenure promotion has resulted in academics devoting a great deal of effort towards the creation of journal rankings.
2.1 The research criteria in tenure promotion
The American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure introduced the tenure system in 1940 (McPherson and Schapiro, 1999). The tenure award is a lifetime contract to the faculty where one aims to protect academic freedom, promote research, attract smart people to pursue academic life, etc. (Brewster, 1972; Brown and Kurland, 1990; Carroll, 2000). Research achievement is of fundamental importance in the tenure evaluation of the performance of a faculty member. Consideration is usually given through evidence of scholarship reflected by the ability of the faculty member to have her research published after the appropriate peer evaluation. In judging research, emphasis is placed on both quality and quantity (Reinstein and Calderon, 2006). Thus, it is indispensable to have a list of journal rankings as the benchmark for assessing research quality.
2.2 Rankings of accounting journals
Howard and Nikolai (1983) conduct a survey among the accounting faculty who earned doctoral degrees from the US universities and teach in the USA. The survey result indicates that JAR, TAR, Journal of Business (JB), Accounting, Organization, and Society (AOS,), Journal of Business Finance & Accounting (JBFA), are the top five accounting journals. Nobes (1985) extends Howard and Nikolai's (1983) research by including samples from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, and finds that JAR, TAR, JAE, JB, and AOS, are the top five journals. Employing the citation method, Beattie and Ryan (1989) examine the performance of Nobes's top seven journals in 1987, and find that the accounting journal ranking order for 1987 is JAR, TAR, JAE, AOS, ABR, AB, and JBFA.
Hull and Wright (1990) examine the accounting faculty's perception of the quality of 79 accounting and business journals. They argue that among accounting journals, JAR, TAR, JAE, AOS, and Journal of American Taxation Association (JATA) are of the highest quality. Brown and Huefner (1994) investigate the quality perception of accounting journals among 367 senior accounting faculty members from Business Week's Best 40 MBA program schools. With 44 accounting journals included in the survey, Brown and Huefner (1994) report TAR, JAR, JAE, CAR, and AOS, as the top five accounting journals. Both Smith (1994) and Jolly et al. (1995) conduct a survey among the accounting faculty members. The top five journals on Smith (1994)'s list are Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory (AUD), TAR, JAR, AOS, and JAE; and on Jolly et al. (1995)'s list are JAR, JAE, TAR, AOS, and Management Science (MS). Johnson et al. (2002) survey all the administrators of accounting programs about publication quality for promotion decisions, and find that TAR, JAR, JAE, AOS, and AUD are perceived as elite journals.
Recent research adopts a more global perspective. Using responses from 260 active researchers at the British and Irish institutions, Brinn et al. (1996) conclude that JAE, TAR, JAR, AOS, and CAR are the top five accounting and finance journals. Ballas and Theoharakis (2003) survey 6,994 accounting faculty members worldwide, and identify TAR, JAR, JAE, AOS, and CAR as the top five accounting journals.
Besides, the survey method, citation analysis is also widely used in ranking academic journals, since the number of citations reflects the influence and contribution of the research. Brown (1996) documents that during the past 30 years, publications by JAR have been cited most frequently, followed by JAE, AOS, and TAR. Tahai and Rigsby (1998) examine the influence of eight accounting journals from 1992 to 1994, and note that papers in JAR, TAR, JAE, and AOS, are cited more often than those published on other journals.
The advent of electronic versions of papers available for downloading from the internet provides another avenue for assessing journal quality, as the download frequency provides a measure of the impact of the paper (Beattie and Goodacre, 2006). Brown (2003) counts the number of downloads for an article from the social science research networks and reports that the 427 most frequently downloaded articles in accounting and finance areas appear in 18 journals, including five finance journals and 13 accounting journals. Accounting papers in JAE, JAR, TAR, Review of Accounting Studies (RAS), and Accounting Horizon (AH) are most likely to be downloaded.
With the aid of computers, Lowe and Locke (2004) use a web-based survey of 1,314 accounting and finance faculty from the US universities concerning the quality of 32 journals, and conclude that the top five accounting journals are AOS, TAR, JAR, JAE, and CAR. Chan et al. (2008) use citations from accounting dissertations completed during the period from 1999 to 2003 to measure the quality of accounting journals. They find that the top journals include TAR, JAR, AOS, and JAE, though the rankings do vary by specialty areas as well as research methods.
Table II summarizes the accounting journal rankings obtained in the prior literature. The table indicates that JAR, TAR, JAE, AOS, and CAR are the five journals that are most consistently ranked as the top five. An interesting thing to mention is that, the ranking methodology in the 1980s and the early 1990s is dominated by the survey approach, while more recent research uses the citation approach and relies heavily on the internet to collect ranking data. This change can be attributed to the boom of the internet services. Table III reports the frequency that accounting journals are ranked as the top 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 journals, respectively, by the prior research listed in Table II.
2.3 Rankings of finance journals
Alexander and Mabry (1994) rank finance journals based on the number of citations found in articles published in four leading finance journals, i.e. JF, JFE, Journal of Financial Qualitative Analysis ( JFQA) and Review of Financial Studies (RFS), during the period from January 1987 to March 1991. They find that JFE, JF, JFQA, Financial Analysts Journal (FAJ), and Financial Management (FM) are the most frequently cited journals during this period.
Corrado and Ferris (1997) survey the influence of research journals on finance doctoral education. Influence is measured by citations from syllabi of finance seminars. They find that five finance journals account for 82.1 percent of the total citations, and they are JF, JFE, JFQA, the RFS and JB. Borokhovich et al. (1999 and 2000) rank journals by their impact factors, and JFE, JF, JB, RFS, and FM are the leading five journals on their list. This result is consistent with Zivney and Reichenstein's (1994).
Chung et al. (2001) rank the finance journals by counting the number of citations found in the papers published in the preeminent finance journals between 1974 and 1998. They find that more than half of the 100 most cited articles were published in JF and JFE. Oltheten et al. (2005) survey 862 finance faculty members and conclude that JF, JFE, RFS, JFQA, and JB were the leading journals. In a more recent study, Maberly and Pierce (2006) rank JF, JFE, RFS, JB, and JFQA as the top five finance journals based on the citation counts found in papers published in JF, JFE, and RFS during the period from 1995 to 2005. Moreover, they develop different rankings for various geographic regions. For example, in the Asia-Pacific region, the top five finance journals were Pacific Basin Finance Journal (PBFJ), Accounting and Finance (AF), International Financial Review (IFR), Asia Pacific Financial Management (APFM), and International Review of Finance (IRF); but in Europe, JBFA, Review of Finance (ROF), European Financial Management (EFM), and European Journal of Finance (EJF) are the top four journals (Tables IV and V).
2.4 Rankings of information system journals
IS combines the study and practice of accounting and finance with the design, implementation, and monitoring of ISs. While the types of computer technologies develops and potential areas of their application increase, so too has the role of an IS and the scope of the discipline (Avison and Elliot, 2005). As a response to the practice in the real business world, the academia has started to show great interests in this area with new journals and publications.
The earliest rankings of IS journals were reported by Hamilton and Ives (1983), with only ten journals on their list. Vogel and Wetherbe (1984) extend the sample from ten to 15 journals, and find that the faculty of the top five IS programs at the US universities publishes most of their research in the Communications of the ACM (CACM), Harvard Business Review (HBR), MIS Quarterly (MISQ), and Sloan Management Review (SMR). The Journal of Data Education (JDE) and Data Base (DB) are the other two journals that the IS faculty are most likely to publish. However, they do not provide a ranking list due to the very limited number of IS journals in the 1980s'.
Gillenson and Stutz (1991) survey among 269 AACSB accredited business schools to investigate their opinions on 38 IS or MIS related journals. They conclude that CACM and MISQ are highly evaluated, consistent with the findings by Culnan (1987), Luke and Doke (1987), Jackson and Nath (1989), and Koong and Weistroffer (1989). MS has also been consistently ranked in the top position (Gillenson and Stutz, 1991; Patten, 1982). Hardgrave and Walstrom (1997) find that MISQ, Information Systems Research (ISR), MS, and CACM are the leadings journals based on the opinions from 370 faculty members at the USA and Canada institutions.
Recently, more research ranks IS journals with the aid of online questionnaires. Mylonopoulos and Theoharakis (2001) conduct an online survey to investigate faculty's opinions about IS journals. Their survey includes 87 journals, which are selected from prior studies (Gillenson and Stutz, 1991; Walstrom and Hardgraveave, 1995; Holsapple et al., 1994). The targeted respondents are asked to rank the top ten journals and the next ten journals. MISQ, CACM, and ISR turn out to be the leading journals; Schwartz and Russo (2004) and Bharati and Tarasewich (2002) corroborated this result.
With the fast development of internet services in the early 20-first century, the number of publications in the area of IS has increased tremendously. Thus, it is possible to use the citation method to rank IS journals. By this approach, Katerattanakul et al. (2003) also conclude that MISQ, ISR, and CACM are the top three IS journals. In addition, researchers start to include more IS journals, even those published outside the USA and the UK, into their survey lists. The results suggest that there are some consistencies in several highly rated journals, i.e. MISQ, CACM, and ISR (Peffers and Ya, 2003; Barnes, 2005). In contrast, by log-multiplicative modeling, Nerur et al. (2005) find that CACM and IEEE are the top journals, while MISQ and ISR are ranked fourth and sixth, respectively.
2.5 Summary of rankings by prior research
In summary, JAR, TAR, JAE, AOS, and CAR are the top five journals in accounting area (Brown and Huefner, 1994; Brinn et al., 1996; Ballas and Theoharakis, 2003; Lowe and Locke, 2004). In the finance area, JF, JFE, and JFQA are the three most influential journals (Alexander and Mabry, 1994; Corrado and Ferris, 1997; Oltheten et al., 2005; Maberly and Pierce, 2006). CACM, MISQ, and ISR are almost consistently ranked as the leading three journals in IS area (Hardgrave and Walstrom, 1997; Mylonopoulos and Theoharakis, 2001; Schwartz and Russo, 2004; Bharati and Tarasewich, 2002).
Extant research attempts to capture the quality of a journal based on either the perception from the faculty or the influence the journal has in the field. To our knowledge, this paper is the first to rank journal quality as perceived by the academic chairs, who are the primary decision makers in tenure, promotion and merit processes. By linking the scholarship criterion in tenure promotion evaluation with the quality of journals, we provide ranking lists that can inform the faculty members the opinions of their judges – their chairs. Moreover, existing research ranks journals in each area separately. To accommodate the growth in multi-disciplinary research, we mix journals in accounting, finance, and IS areas together, and report a comprehensive ranking list.
3 Research methodology
3.1 Web-based survey
This study employs a web-based survey method to rank journals in accounting, finance, and IS areas. We chose the survey approach mainly because it can help us reach our target population, i.e. academic chairs, directly (Weber and Stevenson, 1981; Hawkins et al., 1984; Howard and Nikolai, 1983; Nobes, 1985; Schroeder et al., 1988; Hull and Wright, 1990; Alexander and Mabry, 1994). Other benefits related to the web-based survey method include low cost, fast response, easy access to the internet by academic chairs, etc. Before we started opening the web site, we also did a pre-test on the site from February 11, 2008 to March 2, 2008 by sending the link of the web site to four chairs in accounting, finance, and IS fields in US universities. From business schools that have all accounting, finance, and ISs departments, we randomly chose 1,553 college chairs in accounting, finance, and IS areas from universities and colleges over the world and sent them an email with a direct web site link to the survey on March 3, 2008. By the end of April 26, 2008, we received 460 effective responses; and the response rate is 29.62 percent.
In our sample, we first include the most common journals in the areas of accounting, finance, and IS, and add some journals listed on Cabell's Directories in Accounting, Finance and Management if the acceptance rate is below 20 percent. Finally, there are 196 journals in areas of accounting, finance, and IS on our list, with 96 journals in accounting (49 percent of 196 journals), 108 journals in finance (55 percent of 196 journals), and 35 journals in IS area (18 percent of 196 journals). There are journals in multidisciplinary areas so total is not equal to 100 percent. The differences in the number of journals in each area reflect the variation in the development of each field.
In the survey, we ask the chairs whether they know the journal. If they know the journal, which tier they would like to rate it, based on a four-tier scale (tier 1 means the best quality, and tier 4 represents the lowest quality). We also ask the chairs to indicate whether or not a publication on a specific journal is recognized in tenure and promotion. The survey is anonymous to encourage academic honesty and freedom.
3.2 Ranking methods
We use two methods, the familiarity-rank position index (FARPI) and the geometric mean, to rank the sample journals based on the responses from academic chairs in areas of accounting, finance, IS.
3.2.1 Familiarity-rank position index (FARPI) method
This method has been widely used to rank journals (Oltheten et al., 2005; Theoharakis and Hirst, 2002; Chan et al., 2007). FARPI is computed according to the following: Equation 1 where i denotes the individual journal; R ij is the number of times that journal i is ranked as the jth tier journal, and n is the number of respondents in the sample. The method considers the popularity of a journal. A journal will receive a higher FARPI if more chairs know it, ceteris paribus. Oltheten et al. (2005) argue that a journal with a high FARPI is more influential than a journal with a low FARPI.
Based on FARPI, journals are grouped into four tiers by two statistical methods, the extreme mean method and the quartile method. The former places journals with highest level and lowest level FARPI into each part and calculates the break points. However, by this method, there are only a limited number of journals in tiers 1 and 2, and most journals are classified as tier 3 or 4 journals. Alternatively, we can use the quartile method to spread an equal number of journals into each tier (quartile), according to their FARPI. In particular, journals in the top 26.02 percent of the FARPI are ranked as tier 1 journals, the next 23.98 percent belong to tier 2 journals, 24.49 percent belong to tier 3 journals and the bottom 25.51 percent journals are in tier 4. The slightly uneven distribution is necessary due to natural breaks between quartiles. The purpose of this method is to allow the chairs to motivate faculty to upgrade their research quality by providing an attainable-tiered journal list. With this purpose in mind, except A + list that requires the highest standard, other tiers (B-D) are split into the approximate mid points by looking for natural breaks, i.e. the biggest differences between each FARPI.
3.2.2 Geometric mean method
We assign points to journals ranked into different tiers by the chairs, with four points to a tier 1 journal, three points to a tier 2 journal, two points to a tier 3 journal, and one point to a tier 4 journal. For each journal, we compute the geometric mean. First, we multiply the number of times that a journal is rated as a tier j journal and take the points for that tier, add up the points at each tier, and then take the nth root, where n equals the number of respondents for that journal. Under this method, a journal that is recognized and rated by more chairs will receive a lower geometric mean, and thus be placed at higher level, ceteris paribus. Similar to the FARPI method, this method also reflects the popularity of the journals.
3.3 Validity of our ranking methods
To check the validity of our rankings, we examine the relationship between our rankings and the dummy variable, which is equal to one if publications in the journal are recognized in the tenure promotion, and zero otherwise. In addition, we regress a journal ranking on the number of responses to that particular journal. The reason behind our tests is that a paper in a high-impact journal is considered more consequential than even several papers in lower-impact journals. Moreover, high readership and circulation could be markers of a journal's quality too (Law and van der Veen, 2008).
4 Results and discussion
4.1 Sample demographic data
Among 460 respondents, 80 percent are male, indicating that males dominate the college chairs in accounting, finance, and IS areas. Almost all the respondents are over 30, and nearly one third are over 60, demonstrating that the professional life for academic chairs is longer than for people in other sectors. A few chairs in our sample are under 30, which is a good sign of the fresh blood in this profession. There are 180 responses from outside the USA, counting almost 40 percent of the sample size. We note that almost all the respondents are from English-speaking countries and over 70 percent of the respondents are from either the USA or UK. However, the response concentration in the USA and UK universities would not bias our rankings, as both countries are in the leading positions in accounting, finance, and IS areas in the world. In fact, the high quality of research in the USA and UK may contribute to the high response rate to this survey.
Nearly, 90 percent of the respondents have PhD degrees, and the rest have at least master degrees. Among ther 460 chairs, 300 are from research universities while 180 are from top research schools. Two hundred and seventy-eight respondents had publications in the past five years, while most of them had less than 6 publications in the past three years. Nearly, all of these respondents expressed their plans to publish in the tier 1 journals in the next five years. More than 80 percent of the respondents have full or associate professor titles. Finally, more than half of respondents asked for a copy of the result of this survey, indicating the importance of the research.
4.2 Comprehensive rankings
4.2.1 FARPI approach
Table VI reports a comprehensive ranking list, including all sample journals in areas of accounting, finance, and IS. We divide 196 journals into four tiers based on their FARPI. Using the extreme mean method, we group 11 journals into the tier-1 level, 33 journals into the tier-2 level, 78 journals into the tier-3 level, and 74 journals into the tier-4 level. Most journals are grouped into tier-3 and -4 levels, and the top two tier journals count as only 22.45 percent of the whole sample, indicating the limited number of prestigious journals identified by academic chairs. The 11 journals in the tier-1 level include JAR, TAR, JF, JAE, JFE, MISQ, MS, AMJ, AMR, DS, and CAR. Among them, five are accounting journals, three are finance journals, and five are IS journals. It is interesting that five IS journals are listed among the top 11 journals, but the total number of journals in IS field is less than that in either accounting or finance field. This can be attributed to the rapid growth of the application of computers in business management and the tremendous academic interests in the IS. This also indicates that current accounting and finance research is depending on the development of science and technology of the IS area.
However, among the top five journals, there are three accounting journals, two finance journals, but no IS journals. IS journals are all listed between the sixth to the tenth. Compared with accounting and finance fields, IS is much less developed because of a shorter history. Therefore, the leading journals in the former two have been perceived as the top journals for all three areas. In tier-2 level, there are 33 journals. The ranking list presented in Table VI is very challenging to the faculty, because only 44 journals are rated as tier-1 and -2 journals. With such a small number of journals recognized as high quality, most faculty members would be discouraged to upgrade their research quality, as they do not expect to be competitive enough to publish there. Therefore, we suggest that only those most research active business programs adopt this standard, but not those regular programs.
To encourage academic research by all faculty members, including those in teaching and research schools, we use the quartile method, and allocate an roughly equal number of journals into each tier, according to their FARPI, using natural breaks between quartiles. Thus, the numbers of journals in tier 1, 2, 3, and 4 are 51, 47, 48, and 50, respectively. The purpose of this list is to allow the chairs to motivate faculty members to upgrade their research quality by providing an attainable-tiered journal list. Among 51 journals in tier 1, the first 14 journals are classified as the tier A+ level, with seven journals in accounting area, five in finance area, and six in IS area. By this approach, the number (14) of tier A + journals is bigger than the number (11) of tier 1 journals reported in Table VI, and the newly added three journals are JB, AOS, and JFQA. Besides, those 14 tier A + journals, which represent the highest standard in each area, 37 more journals are listed as tier 1 level. Using this list, schools can promote research as the faculty members may have more confidence in publishing their work in the journals that are recognized highly by their chairs.
4.3 Rankings in accounting area
Besides, the comprehensive rankings provided in Tables VI and VII, we present journal rankings in each area. Moreover, we compare our ranking results with prior rankings to examine whether there are changes on the perception of the quality of journals during the past 20 years. The following rankings are all obtained by the FARPI approach.
Table VIII presents the ranking result of accounting journals on the basis of their FARPI. Among 96 accounting journals, six have FARPIs higher than 80, and the order is listed as the following: JAR, TAR, JAE, CAR, JB, and AOS. In fact, JAR, TAR, JAE, CAR, and AOS have been constantly rated as top five accounting journals in the literature. Our result corroborates the prior rankings, by adding evidence that the top journals in the minds of academic chairs are similar to those perceived as elite journals by the faculty members. The difference between our accounting list and the traditional list is JB. JB is a multi-disciplinary journal, and has been consistently rated as a leading journal in finance. Since JB publishes accounting papers, we also include it in the sample of accounting journals. It is straightforward to see that academic chairs, no matter their fields, rate JB highly.
In Table IX, we compare our ranking results with two other rankings, obtained by Jolly et al. (1995) and Chan et al. (2008). The latter two rate the quality of accounting journals, according to the perception of academic faculty members. In contrast, our rankings are based on the opinions of the academic chairs. The results achieved from different approaches are similar. JAR, JAE, AOS, TAR, CAR, AH, and JMAR are rated as top 15 by all three studies, indicating that the high quality journals perceived by faculty members are also recognized as elite journals by academic chairs. In addition, our survey was conducted in 2008, and Jolly et al. (1995) was in 1995, implying that those top journals have maintained their high standards and leading positions for over a decade. The same trend is also found in finance area, but not in the IS area. One suggestion from this finding is that it is difficult for new journals to compete with those existing journals in accounting and finance areas, and hence college chairs may need to pay a little more attention on those new journals to help new faculty members survive and flourish.
4.4 Rankings in finance area
Table X provides the ranking result of finance journals. We find that JF, JAE, JFE, JB, and JFQA are the top five journals among 108 finance journals, and they are also highly ranked when all accounting and IS journals are added to the list, as shown in Table VI. Interestingly, HBR, a multi-discipline journal, is rated the 14th among 96 accounting journals, the 10th among 108 finance journals, and the 11th among 35 IS journals, demonstrating that top multi-disciplinary journals are evaluated highly by the chairs in each area. The increased interests in research across various fields may also contribute to the prosperity and popularity of multi-disciplinary journals.
Table XI compares our ranking result with that obtained by Alexander and Mabry (1994) and Oltheten et al. (2005). JF, JFE, JB, JFQA, and FM are consistently ranked as leading journals in finance area, indicating that these journals have kept their leading positions for almost 15 years, and that both the faculty members and academic chairs have similar perceptions. Table XI also confirms our finding that the leading multi-disciplinary journals are also evaluated highly in the finance area. For example, on the finance journal-ranking list provided by Alexander and Mabry (1994), the top 12 journals include Econometrica, Rand (Bell) Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Journal of Law and Economics, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, all of which are periodicals on finance and economics.
4.5 Rankings in the IS area
Table XII presents our rankings of IS journals, and Table XIII compares this result with previous rankings provided by Hardgrave and Walstrom (1997) and Barnes (2005). On our list, MISQ, MS, AMJ, AMR, and DS are the top five out of 35 IS journals. Surprisingly, CACM, which is rated as number two by Barnes (2005), and number four by Hardgrave and Walstrom (1997), is placed at the 18th on our list. Another journal, ISR, used to belong to the top five journals by Hardgrave and Walstrom (1997) and Barnes (2005), is rated the eighth in our study. In contrast, JB, rated the sixth on our list, is not even included among the top ten by prior studies. One explanation could be that prior IS journal rankings exclude multi-disciplinary journals, e.g. MS.
Different from finance and accounting journal rankings, IS journal rankings have changed significantly during the past decade. This change is attributable to the rapid growth in this area. Moreover, in an emerging field like IS, people are more likely to accept new journals and evaluate them more favorably. With the boom of new journals and the tremendous development in IS area, it is also difficult for these traditional journals to maintain their leading positions.
4.6 Robustness check for the validity of our rankings
Table XIV tests the relationship between the ranking and the dummy variable, which is equal to 1 if the journal is recognized for tenure promotion. The coefficient of the dummy variable is 0.1211, and significant at 1 percent level (t=25.0852), demonstrating the positive association between our journal rankings and the journal publication recognition by the departments for tenure promotion. The adjusted R 2 is 76.41 percent, indicating that highly rated journals tend to be accepted by the departments for tenure award evaluation.
Table XV explores the association between our rankings and the response rate for each journal. Intuitively, the higher quality the journal has, the more readers it will have, ceteris paribus. Consistent with our expectation, we find a positive relationship between our rankings and the response rates. The coefficient is 0.1148, and is statistically significant at 1 percent level (t=14.70). The adjusted R 2 of the model is 52 percent, indicating that the response rate itself can explain over half of the variation in the ranking order.
4.7 Comprehensive ranking by the geometric mean approach
Table XVI presents a different ranking list based on the geometric mean method, which emphasizes on the popularity of a journal. A journal, which receives more responses from the chairs due to popularity, will have a lower geometric mean than the one with fewer responses, and hence be placed at a higher position. Therefore, journals that may not be regarded as the leading ones in the academic field, could be ranked at a high level by the geometric mean approach. For example, the Harvard Business Review is ranked the 12th out of 195 journals, because almost all the respondents rated it. In fact, Harvard Business Review is a business magazine featuring current business articles, business case studies, etc. but not an academic journal. As shown in Table XVI, JF, TAR, JMAR, MISQ, and JB are the top five journals. The purpose of Table XVI is to provide editors and publishers with the information about the popularity of their journals, because not only the quality, but also the popularity is critical to the competitiveness of the journal.
5 Conclusion
Based on the opinions of college chairs, we find that JAR, TAR, JF, JAE, JFE, MISQ, MS, AMJ, AMR, DS, and CAR are tier 1 journals out of 196 sample journals in accounting, finance, and IS fields. Those traditionally regarded as high quality are also evaluated as top journals by our respondents. Among the leading 11 journals, five are in IS area, indicating the fast growth and wide recognition of journals in this area by academic chairs. From the rankings in each academic area, we find that multi-disciplinary journals are ranked at high level. In addition, we find that our rankings in accounting and finance are consistent with prior research conducted even a decade ago. However, the rankings in IS have changed dramatically during the past 15 years. We attribute this difference to the stability in accounting and finance research, and the rapid change in IS research. The robustness check confirms the validity of our rankings, as highly ranked journals are more likely to be recognized in tenure promotion, and be known by academic chairs.
Different decision-makers can use the rankings provided by this study for different purposes. For example, very high research activities universities may adopt the rankings listed in Table VI to award tenure or scholarship, as it represents very high academic standards. However, for most schools, particularly teaching and research schools, such high standards are unrealistic and may eliminate the passion for research. Therefore, we provide a different ranking list in Table VII, where more journals are counted as tiers 1 and 2 journals. Different departments can evaluate research performance by using the rankings in the individual area. In addition, editors and publishers may show interests in the ranking list obtained by the geometric mean method (Table XVI), as this approach focuses on the popularity of the journal. More importantly, this study informs the faculty members what journals are evaluated highly by their chairs, and hence helps them to set up the proper research agenda to meet the tenure and promotion expectations. Last but not least, both the chairs and the faculty members can benefit from this research by understanding the trend of current business-related research, including the growth in multi-disciplinary research, and the rapid development in the IS area.
There are some research limitations in this study. First, this study only includes 196 journals in the survey, but the number of journals in accounting, finance, and IS areas far exceeds 196. Second, some journals, which are related to accounting, finance, or IS, are not included in the survey, because they focus on other academic fields, i.e. the American Economic Review. Finally, survey research has its own limitations, including the sample bias, subjectivity, etc. In spite of the above concerns, we believe in the validity of our rankings, especially after the comparison between our results and the prior rankings, and the robustness checks.
Equation 1
Table I Names and acronyms
Table II Summary of accounting journal rankings with prior research
Table III Summary of accounting journal rankings with prior research
Table IV Summary of finance journal rankings with prior research
Table V Summary of finance journal rankings with prior research
Table VI Journal rankings by FARPI (mean extreme methods)
Table VII Journal rankings by FARPI (quartile methods)
Table VIII Accounting journal rankings by FARPI
Table IX Comparison between Wu et al. accounting journal rankings with previous rankings
Table X Finance journal rankings by FARPI
Table XI Comparison between Wu et al. finance journal rankings with previous rankings
Table XII IS journal rankings by FARPI
Table XIII Comparison between Wu et al. IS journal rankings with previous rankings
Table XIV Regression of journal ranking on the dummy variable of journal recognition in tenure promotion
Table XV Regression of journal ranking on response rate
Table XVI Journal rankings by the geometric mean method
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Further Reading
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Corresponding author
Ji Wu can be contacted at: wuj4@lincoln.ac.nz