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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2012‒01‒18
three papers chosen by Jonas Holmström Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | Michael McAleer (Erasmus University Rotterdam,Tinbergen Institute,Kyoto University,Complutense University of Madrid); Chia-Lin Chang (Department of Applied Economics Department of Finance National Chung Hsing University) |
| Abstract: | Experts possess knowledge and information that are not publicly available. The paper is concerned with the ranking of academic journal quality and research impact using a survey of experts from a national project on ranking academic finance journals. A comparison is made with publicly available bibliometric data, namely the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (hereafter ISI) for the Business - Finance category. The paper analyses the leading international journals in Finance using expert scores and quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs), and highlights the similarities and differences in the expert scores and alternative RAMs, where the RAMs are based on alternative transformations of citations taken from the ISI database. Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to answer the perennial questions as to When, Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited (see Chang et al. (2011a, b, c)). 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 13 of the leading 34 journals considered, 10 RAMs are analysed for 21 highly-cited journals in Finance. Harmonic mean rankings of the 10 RAMs for the 34 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 and influence relative to the Harmonic Mean rankings. A simple regression model is used to predict expert scores on the basis of RAMs that capture journal impact, journal policy, the number of high quality papers, and quantitative information about a journal. |
| Keywords: | Expert scores, Journal quality, Research assessment measures, Impact factor, IFI, C3PO, PI-BETA, STAR, Eigenfactor, Article Influence, h-index. |
| JEL: | C18 C81 C83 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kyo:wpaper:806&r=sog |
| By: | Michael McAleer (Erasmus University Rotterdam,Tinbergen Institute,Kyoto University,Complutense University of Madrid); Chia-Lin Chang (Department of Applied Economics Department of Finance National Chung Hsing University) |
| Abstract: | The Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (hereafter ISI) category of Economics has one of the largest numbers of journals, at 304, of any ISI discipline, and hence has wide coverage. The paper analyses the leading international journals in the Economics sub-disciplines of Energy, Environmental and Resource Economics using quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs), and highlights the similarities and differences in alternative RAMs. The RAMs are based on alternative transformations of citations taken from the ISI database. Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to answer the perennial questions as to When, Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited (see Chang et al. (2011a, b, c)). 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 one of the 20 journals considered, 13 RAMs are analysed for 19 highly-cited journals in Energy, Environmental and Resource Economics in the ISI category of Economics. Harmonic mean rankings of the 13 RAMs for the 19 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 and influence relative to the Harmonic Mean rankings. |
| Keywords: | Research assessment measures, Impact factor, IFI, C3PO, PI-BETA, STAR, Eigenfactor, Article Influence, h-index. |
| JEL: | Q10 Q20 Q30 Q40 Q50 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kyo:wpaper:808&r=sog |
| By: | Boumans, Marcel; Dupont-Kieffer, Ariane |
| Abstract: | Understanding the history of econometrics as a modern science also asks for understanding of the development of the image of science, which includes the history of philosophy of science and the history of economic methodology. Beside that philosophers of science need to be historically informed, historians of science need to be philosophical informed, which mean more precisely here that they need to be informed about the developments of the philosophical ideas about science. Corry's distinction between the body and image of knowledge does not only provide a framework to write histories of econometrics, but also to write a history of these histories. From its beginnings, econometricians have considered historical knowledge as reflexive knowledge useful to delineate their discipline. |
| Keywords: | econometrics; philosophy of science; discipline |
| JEL: | B23 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35744&r=sog |