A few people have asked what is my favorite journal list?
It's a question that popped up since I posted about journal lists, my antipathy towards them, & how being attentive to them can help an academic career.
So why didn't I share a preferred journal list?
Because I'm not fond of their subjectiveness.
Consider the Financial Times 50 (FT50) list. While it suggests great journals, how it defines "great" is a bit of a mystery, suspect journals appear on the list & more deserving journals do not.
Consider the UT-Dallas (UTD) list. No one I know can explain how journals were selected & why some disciplines have more journals than others.
Consider my professional association's journal list - the AIS Senior Scholars Basket. Like the FT50, while the "Basket" contains some great journals, other great ones are not included. Like the UTD list, no one can explain the actual process for naming journals to the Basket.
At some level, whether a list is broad like the FT50, thematic like the UTD list, or discipline-specific like the Basket, there will always be an element of ambiguity & subjectivity in any list that rates journals better or worse.
Why?
Because every discipline has tacit, field-specific knowledge that informs understanding of journal quality & impact.
And because field-specific knowledge has a social component, raters will be more likely to give higher ratings to where their work appears, their friends' work appears, or where work like theirs appears.
Yet, every business school in the United States uses a list like the FT50, the UTD, or the AIS list to evaluate faculty productivity.
So what to do?
Find a list that suits your preferences & research.
As you search for a list that makes sense to you, you will find that some lists are more transparent & replicable than others, where the designers explain their objectives, their ranking method, & how to change the list.
Also, you will find that lists are more & less specific - some well suited to a niche within a discipline & some rating journals across disciplines.
Because my work cuts across disciplines, I typically use many lists - including the FT50, the UTD, & the Basket - to assess journal quality.
However, I've never been satisfied with their transparency, so no recommendation.
Recently, I came across the Federation of Management Societies (FMS) of China (https://lnkd.in/gq-xBbJK).
I am impressed. The designers offer a concise explanation of their approach to ranking & including journals. I like that FMS synthesizes experts' views & balances them with rankings from existing journal rankings.
It's like moving from rankings sports teams based on journalists' opinions to considering the opinions of coaches, players statistics, games played & teams' historical performance.
So, the FMS list is now my preferred journal list.
I hope you can find a list that suits you.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jason-thatcher-0329764_ranking-academiclife-journals-activity-6892305180977692672-Vlj8?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web
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