To what extent do articles published in other than “top journals” have impact on marketing?

The purpose of this study is to examine the relevance and limitations of using a top journal approach as a proxy for an article's value or contribution.

The authors determined the citations for all articles published in 2001 and 2003 in 26 key marketing journals included in the Social Science Citation Index and 50 journals included in Google Scholar to rate the impact of a specific article. They also assessed these articles to examine the source of citations, as a way of measuring impact.

This study indicates that articles published in the journals most often considered the top three or four in marketing are cited by others significantly more often than the ones published in the other journals. However, the authors found substantial misclassification errors from using publications in these “top” journals to infer a top article status across three different criteria for defining a top article.

These findings strongly support the need to evaluate each article on its own merits, rather than abdicating this responsibility by using journal ranking as a proxy for an article's value or contribution.