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Journal ranking is widely used in academic circles in the evaluation of an academic journal's impact and quality. Journal rankings are intended to reflect the place of a journal within its field, the relative difficulty of being published in that journal, and the prestige associated with it. They have been introduced as official research evaluation tools in several countries.
Traditionally, journal ranking "measures" or evaluations have been provided simply through institutional lists established by academic leaders or through a committee vote. These approaches have been notoriously politicized and inaccurate reflections of actual prestige and quality, as they would often reflect the biases and personal career objectives of those involved in ranking the journals; also causing the problem of highly disparate evaluations across institutions.[1] Consequently, many institutions have required external sources of evaluation of journal quality. The traditional approach here has been through surveys of leading academics in a given field, but this approach too has potential for bias, though not as profound as that seen with institution-generated lists.[2] Consequently, governments, institutions, and leaders in scientometric research have turned to a litany of observed bibliometric measures on the journal level that can be used as surrogates for quality and thus eliminate the need for subjective assessment.[1]
Consequently, several journal-level metrics have been proposed, most citation-based:
Negative consequences of rankings are generally well-documented and relate to the performativity of using journal rankings for performance measurement purposes.[19][20] Studies of methodological quality and reliability have found that "reliability of published research works in several fields may be decreasing with increasing journal rank",[21] contrary to widespread expectations.[22]
For example, McKinnon (2017) has analyzed how the ABS-AJG ranking, which in spite of its methodological shortcomings is widely accepted in British business schools, has had negative consequences for the transportation and logistics management disciplines.[23] A study published in 2021 compared the Impact Factor, Eigenfactor Score, SCImago Journal & Country Rank and the Source Normalized Impact per Paper, in journals related to Pharmacy, Toxicology and Biochemistry. It discovered there was "a moderate to high and significant correlation" between them.[24]
Thousands of universities and research bodies issued official statements denouncing the idea that research quality can be measured based on the uni-dimensional scale of a journal ranking, most notably by signing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which asked "not [to] use journal-based metrics ... as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist's contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions".[25] The Community for Responsible Research in Business Management (cRRBM) asks whether "even the academy is being served when faculty members are valued for the quantity and placement of their articles, not for the benefit their research can have for the world".[26] Some academic disciplines such as management exhibit a journal ranking lists paradox: on the one hand, researchers are aware of the numerous limitations of ranking lists and their deleterious impact on scientific progress; on the other hand, they generally find journal ranking lists to be useful and employ them, in particular, when the use of ranking lists is not mandated by their institutions.[27]
Several national and international rankings of journals exist, e.g.:
They have been introduced as official research evaluation tools in several countries.[40]
