Abstract: |
The paper analyses the leading international journals in Tourism and
Hospitality Research using quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs),
highlights the similarities and differences in alternative RAMs, shows that
several RAMs capture similar performance characteristics of highly cited
journals, and shows that some other RAMs have low correlations with each
other, and hence add significant informational value. Several RAMs are
discussed for the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science database (hereafter ISI).
Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to answer the
questions as to When, Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited.
The RAMs include the most widely used RAM, namely 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 (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor,
Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index,
PI-BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors), 2-year Self-citation Threshold
Approval Ratings (2Y-STAR), Historical Self-citation Threshold Approval
Ratings (H-STAR), Impact Factor Inflation (IFI), and Cited Article Influence
(CAI). As data are not available for 5YIF, Article Influence and CAI for 11 of
the 14 journals considered, 10 RAMs are analysed for 14 highly-cited journals
in Tourism and Hospitality in the ISI category of Hospitality, Leisure, Sports
& Tourism. Harmonic mean rankings of the 10 RAMs for the 14 highly-cited
journals are also presented. It is shown that emphasizing the 2-year impact
factor of a journal, which partly answers the question as to When published
papers are cited, to the exclusion of other informative RAMs, which answer
Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited, can lead to a distorted
evaluation of journal impact. |