Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Chia-Lin Chang
Author-Email: changchialin@nchu.edu.tw
Author-Person: pch286 
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Applied Economics, Department of Finance, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Author-Name: Michael McAleer
Author-Person: pmc90 
Author-Workplace-Name: Econometric Institute, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Tinbergen Institute,
	The Netherlands, Department of Quantitative Economics, Complutense University of Madrid, and Institute of
	Economic Research, Kyoto University. 
Title: Just How Good are the Top Three Journals in Finance? An Assessment Based on Quantity and Quality Citations
Abstract: The paper is concerned with ranking academic journal quality and research impact in Finance, based on 
	the widely-used Thomson Reuters ISI (2013) Web of Science citations database (hereafter ISI). The paper 
	analyses the 89 leading international journals in the ISI category of “Business – Finance” using 
	quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs). The analysis highlights the similarities and 
	differences in various RAMs, all of which are based on alternative transformations of journal citations 
	and impact. Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to determine the citations 
	frequency of published papers that are cited in journals listed in ISI. The RAMs include the classic 
	2-year impact factor including journal self citations (2YIF), 2-year impact factor excluding journal 
	self citations (2YIF*), 5-year impact factor including journal self citations (5YIF), Immediacy including 
	journal self citations, Eigenfactor (or Journal Influence), Article Influence, h-index, PI-BETA (Papers 
	Ignored - By Even The Authors), Self-citation Threshold Approval Rating (STAR), 5YD2 (namely, 5YIF 
	divided by 2YIF), Escalating Self Citations (ESC), and ICQ (Index of Citation Quality). The paper 
	calculates the harmonic mean of the ranks of up to 16 RAMs. It is shown that emphasizing 2YIF to the 
	exclusion of other informative RAMs can lead to a misleading evaluation of journal quality and impact 
	relative to the harmonic mean of the ranks. The analysis of the 89 ISI journals in Finance makes it clear 
	that there are three leading journals in Finance, namely Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial 
	Economics and Review of Financial Studies, which form an exclusive club in terms of the RAMs that measure 
	journal quality and impact based on alternative measures of journal citations. The next two journals in 
	Finance in terms of overall quality and impact are Journal of Accounting and Economics and Journal of 
	Monetary Economics. 

Classification-JEL: C18, C81, Y10.

Keywords: Research assessment measures, Impact factor, IFI, C3PO, PI-BETA, STAR, Eigenfactor, Article Influence, 
	h-index, 5YD2, ICQ, ESC, harmonic mean of the ranks, finance, journal rankings.

Note: For financial support, the first author wishes to thank the National Science Council, Taiwan, and the 
	second author wishes to acknowledge the Australian Research Council and the National Science Council, 
	Taiwan. The paper was prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Taiwan Finance Association, 
	May 2014, Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Length: 36 pages
Creation-Date: 2014-05  
Number: 2014-10 
X-File-Ref: http://america.sim.ucm.es/repec/ucm/ref/doicae1410.txt
File-URL: https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/25563/1/1410.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:ucm:doicae:1410