Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/33306 
Year of Publication: 
2006
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 2070
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In universities all over the world, hiring and promotion committees regularly hear the argument: this is important work because it is about to appear in prestigious journal X. Moreover, those who allocate levels of research funding, such as in the multi-billion pound Research Assessment Exercise in UK universities, often come under pressure to assess research quality in a mechanical way by using journal prestige ratings. The results in this paper suggest that such tendencies are dangerous. It uses total citations over a quarter of a century as the criterion. The paper finds that it is far better to publish the best article in an issue of a medium-quality journal like the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics than to publish the worst article (or often the worst 4 articles) in an issue of a top journal like the American Economic Review. Implications are discussed.
Subjects: 
citations
research productivity
economics journals
Research Assessment Exercise
JEL: 
A11
O3
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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