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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2009‒04‒25
four papers chosen by Jonas Holmström Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | David L. Anderson (Queen's University); John Tresler (University of Waikato) |
| Abstract: | This paper considers a new approach for ranking the research productivity of academic departments. Our approach provides rankings in terms of residual research output after controlling for the key characteristics of each department’s academic staff. More specifically, we estimate residual research output rankings for all of New Zealand’s economics departments based on their publication performance over the 2000 to 2006 period. We do so after taking into account the following characteristics of each department’s academic staff: gender, experience, seniority, academic credentials, and academic rank. The paper concludes with a comparison of rankings generated by the residual research approach with those generated by traditional approaches to research rankings. |
| Keywords: | economics departments; university rankings; research output; economics research |
| JEL: | A19 C81 J24 |
| Date: | 2009–03–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wai:econwp:09/03&r=sog |
| By: | Howard J. Wall |
| Abstract: | Nearly all journal rankings in economics use some weighted average of citations to calculate a journal's impact. These rankings are often used, formally or informally, to help assess the publication success of individual economists or institutions. Although ranking methods and opinions are legion, scant attention has been paid to the usefulness of any ranking as representative of the many articles published in a journal. First, because the distributions of citations across articles within a journal are seriously skewed, and the skewness differs across journals, the appropriate measure of central tendency is the median rather than the mean. Second, large shares of articles in the highest-ranked journals are cited less frequently than typical articles in much-lower-ranked journals. Finally, a ranking that uses the h-index is very similar to one that uses total citations, making it less than ideal for assessing the typical impact of articles within a journal. |
| Keywords: | Economics |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2009-14&r=sog |
| By: | Holm, Håkan J. (Department of Economics, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the credibility of author anonymity provided by double-blind review processes. It is argued that authors have strong incentives to disseminate information about their papers before publication. A sample from two economics journals, both using double-blind review processes provides evidence that author revealing information of most accepted papers is available on the Internet before the review processes are finished. The difficulty and cost of identifying authors of anonymized unpublished manuscripts are examined in an experiment where subjects are paid according to their identification performance. The vast majority of authors can be identified within 60 seconds. |
| Keywords: | Review Process; Scientific Publication; Experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D80 O30 |
| Date: | 2009–04–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2009_005&r=sog |
| By: | Kóczy László Á.; Nichifor Alexandru; Strobel Martin (METEOR) |
| Abstract: | The quality of publications, approximated by the containing journal''s quality indicator, is often the basis for hire and promotion in academic and research positions. Over the years a handful of ranking methods have been proposed. Discussing the most prominent methodswe show that they are inherently biased against journals publishing short papers. |
| Keywords: | Economics ; |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:umamet:2009018&r=sog |