Dr Stephen Dann

The Australian National University

Best Journals versus Best Fit Journals

A Strategic Orientation to

Research Quality

But where’s the list?

You may remember me from…

• “The Biggest Pack of Rankers I’ve Ever Seen”

• Back in 2002, I was less than charitable about Journal Ranking Studies.

• I thought they were less than useless

• But that was before I was commissioned to write a ranked list of marketing journals…

But where’s the list?

Now I know they’re less than useless

• Journal of Market-Focused Management

Biggest Pack of Rankers I’ve ever seen 2

Stop me if you’ve ranked this journal before

But where’s the list?

Lit Review

• Twenty two years, twenty journal ranking systems

• Once the reader looks outside of the top three or five journals, the inconsistency of these lists stand as a tribute to "one size fits nobody" production orientations.

• Mute acceptance of one-dimensional measures of “best”, based on the respondent's perception of "quality" (Baumgarter and Pieters, 2003).

• Would we tolerate this in an honours student project?

But where’s the list?

Age shall not weary them…

But where’s the list?

Ageing of the (sample) Population

Rank Name D.O.B.

(1) Journal of Marketing (JM) 1937

(2) Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) 1974

(3) Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 1964

(4) Marketing Science (MS) 1982

(5) Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) 1973

(6) Journal of Retailing (JR) 1925

(7) International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) 1959

(8) Journal of Business Research (JBR) 1978

(9) Journal of Advertising (JA) 1972

(10) Journal of Advertising Research (JAR) 1961

But where’s the list?

The Model

But where’s the list?

Assumption

• Research output is assumed to have two core components – the business strategy component which

represents the organisational research goals of the University,

– goal of developing knowledge within a specific discipline

• If you don’t agree with this split, then you won’t like what happens next…

But where’s the list?

Discipline and University Research Goals

AcademyDriven

Research(Tier 1)

Marketing UnitResearchAgenda(Tier 3)

AcademyDriven

Research(Tier 1)

Marketing UnitResearchAgenda(Tier 3)

University ResearchObjectives

(Tier 2)

Non aligned Research

(Tier 4

University ResearchObjectives

(Tier 2)

Non aligned Research

(Tier 4

Discipline Research Goals

University Research Goals

Marketing Academy Journals

(Quadrant 1)

Marketing Group

Agenda (Quadrant 3)

Research Objectives

(Quadrant 2)

Non aligned Research

(Quadrant 4)

Discipline Research Goals

University Research Goals

But where’s the list?

Quadrant 1Developing the discipline of marketing

• list of the journals published by the respective academies of marketing across the major geographic areas– Australasia, Europe and America

• Journal of Marketing and Australasian Marketing Journal are Academy journals. – Same nature, same cluster

But where’s the list?

Quadrant 2Addressing Institutional Research Goals

• The second quadrant of journals is based on providing a framework to encourage academics to pursue the research interest of the university in conjunction with the development of their relevant academies

• Quadrant 2 level journals are selected by matching the research strength of the organisation against the market demand for the research output product

But where’s the list?

Quadrant 3Marketing Unit Research Agenda Based Objectives

• Quadrant 3 journals are the disciplinary and sub-disciplinary specific journals which are representative of the peak quality outlets for a specific area or specific research concentration in marketing

– Diversification! Who’d have thought of it?

• Development of a research agenda of is based on the staff member’s self reported identification of their areas of research specialisations – Trial Quadrants conducted using a list of track streams from the

Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference – Lehmann (2006) category lists

But where’s the list?

Quadrant 4High Quality Independent Research Output

• That thing we used to call academic freedom.

• Plus! Somewhere to put the rest of the journals– Quadrant 4 is also a recognition that it is possible for

a high quality research outlet to not be relevant to the research agenda of an institution.

• But first, a word of caution

But where’s the list?

Quadrant 4 Warning

• Inclusion in Quadrant 4 is not a criticism of the quality of the journal or the research.

The fourth quadrant is the preserve of academic freedom, and as such should be used to defend the ability of the individual researcher to pursue

research beyond the goal of the university, academy or marketing unit agenda.

But where’s the list?

Controversial ElementsWhat? It gets worse?

But where’s the list?

Pick Your Poison

• Quadrants versus Academic Freedom

• Mere existence of ranks

But where’s the list?

Academic Freedom

But where’s the list?

Time for a quick controversy?

• The paper appears to accept the argument that a university may control and restrict an academic’s choice of research to work on. The paper should acknowledge there is controversy over that argument.

Controversy acknowledged

But where’s the list?

Base line

• We’re already under restricted choice with the Quality Rank journals focusing all work towards a narrow band of “quality” journals.

Lehmann (2006) Top Journals

Does that look like choice to you?

But where’s the list?

I’m sorry, I left my academic freedom of choice in my other discipline

Rank Name D.O.B.

(1) Journal of Marketing (JM) 1937

(2) Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) 1974

(3) Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 1964

(4) Marketing Science (MS) 1982

(5) Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) 1973

(6) Journal of Retailing (JR) 1925

(7) International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) 1959

(8) Journal of Business Research (JBR) 1978

(9) Journal of Advertising (JA) 1972

(10) Journal of Advertising Research (JAR) 1961

But where’s the list?

Controversy I: Academic Freedom

• Being instructed to publish in Tier 1 or Tier 2 journals in the UQBS list does implicitly limit research agendas to only those areas that are sought by a limited range of journals

Let’s have the guts to be honest

• Quadrant mechanism is designed around the recognition, and explicit acknowledgement, that the notion of pure academic research freedom does not exist in a system that is graded on research quality league tables.

But where’s the list?

Mere existence of ranks

But where’s the list?

(sort of) Controversy II: Those Damn Ranks

• mere existence of a list of target journals should be a controversial issue worthy of debate. – Should be. Isn’t.

But where’s the list?

Why not?

• Every single one of us in this room who’s played the journal ranks game, graded someone’s merit on where they published without reading what they published, or sniffed at a journal for not being a “quality” venue for a SEM laden replicate-o-rama study into meaningless crap

We continue to play this game

We’re to blame for the game being played

But where’s the list?

If you came here to see a list of best fit journals that you could take away and apply to your institution,

you’ve misunderstood the point of the entire paper.

Presenting a one-dimensional universally applicable index would be to defeat the point of the paper

entirely

Go make your own list.

Questions?

(Do I expect to work in this sector much

longer?)

(How much is one of the Captain Career Limiting

Move figurines?)