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What are the top economics journals?
Here is one recent ranking, courtesy of Newmark's Door. My view is simple. The American Economic Review and Journal of Political Economy are the two most important journals. The former will have more pieces with careful testing and design, but the latter has more conceptually important articles. I find the JPE more enjoyable. The Quarterly Journal of Economics has brilliant pieces which can tend toward the unsound or have imperfect execution. Econometrica, while it remains a clear third or fourth in rank, is less important than it used to be, perhaps because pure theory has declined in influence. For this same reason, the Rand Journal and Review of Economic Studies, while both still very good journals, have lost their previous luster. Journal of Economic Theory mattered in the 1970s, but it has fallen off a cliff. After that you have the top field journals, which of course vary by field. Journal of Economic Perspectives and Journal of Economic Literature serve important functions, and are both fun and instructive to read, but they are rarely venues for presenting new ideas. They report how new ideas have been interpreted and digested.
Science journals, especially Nature, are starting to become more important for economics. My favorite field journal is the Journal of Law and Economics. Journal of Finance is of very high quality, though finance is a world unto itself. The relative returns to the top few journals have risen greatly in the last fifteen years; many more schools require publications in those journals for tenure than before.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 14, 2006 at 05:29 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Wow. Let's just point out that that is an absurd ranking. Ranking based on cite count is just not an ok method anymore. It may have been in the past, pre-internet, because you didn't see articles until they were published. But now, by the time a good article is published, it has been cited many, many times as a working paper. But whatever journal then publishes that article presumably is not given credit for the previous citations. Or, rather, the "impact" of an article is not properly captured by counting only the citations after publication. So then ranking journals only by citations after publication undervalues the "impact" of the articles it publishes.
This wouldn't be a problem if this undervaluing was proportional, except for the fact that the best articles are the disproportionately circulated before publication, and thus are going to disproportionately cited before publication.
Posted by: Tony Vallencourt at Jun 14, 2006 8:51:12 AM
Tony,
I agree that the linked ranking is completely off, but why would your argument lead to biased rankings? It's true that cite counts miss citations of working papers, and more so for the best articles, but I don't see how this mechanism would overturn (rather than just compress) rankings.
I basically agree with Tyler's ranking of journals. I view the JPE as more of a mixed bag than he does. The way-too-long turnaround times and the often terrible refereeing (often by Chicago PhD students) makes the JPE a bad journal for not yet well-known and especially untenured economists. This leads to a situation where the JPE publishes some very good papers by well-known people, and quite a few really bad papers which shouldn't be in an A-level journal at all. What the JPE lacks are good and ambitious papers by young economists who aren't sure whether their paper will get into the JPE. These folks don't want to risk having to wait for 12 months for a bad referee report. The QJE is much better in that respect, but suffers from too much of a pro Harvard/MIT bias.
Posted by: Commenterlein at Jun 14, 2006 9:57:21 AM
OK, maybe I didn't think that out fully. But I firmly believe that this method of ranking, in the day of the working paper, is useless. The bias I outlined may not be the main problem (but it will cause some problems), but there's a bigger one: it's also the case that most citations happen early in an article's life, and thus those journals that get papers out earlier are going to do better, but without a good reason. This is doubly a problem, because it seems to me like the best articles spend years as working papers (even if they tend to get accepted on the first try) and the best journals spend more time in revisions.
The exception to long turn-around times in top journals is the QJE, where you get very fast service. And that is the one that does best in these citation rankings. (FWIW, I also generally agree with Tyler's rankings, though I still hold RAND in high regard; it's become more empirically minded in recent years, and a lot of good empirical IO papers have come through there.)
Posted by: Tony Vallencourt at Jun 14, 2006 10:12:57 AM
Laband and Piette (1994:"The Relative Impacts of Economics Journals: 1970-1990",Journal of Economic Literature XXXII: 640-666.), indicate that top journals experienced declining reputations over the twenty year period from 1970 to 1990. They show that between 1970 and 1990, the "percentage of impacted adjusted citations" all fell: AER from 19.4 to 11.9 percent, JPE from 11.8 to 9.3 percent, QJE from 8.0 to 4.7 percent, EJ from 3.9 to 1.2 percent (p. 654). These journals together had 44.1 percent of impact-adjusted citations in 1970, but 26.1 percent of impact-adjusted citations in 1990.
One reason is that these journals are no longer the forums for intellecual debate that they once were because they have significantly curtailed publications of comments, replies and rejoinders. To read a debate on this take a look at the last several issues of the web accessible Econ Journal Watch: vol. 2, no. 2; and vol. 3, no. 2. The debate is about WHY journal editors have so drastically curtailed critical commentary in these journals. Eitoral favoritism, and rent seeking appear to have been factors.
Posted by: jim at Jun 14, 2006 11:23:19 AM
Tyler,
You wrote: "Econometrica, while it remains a clear third or fourth in rank, is less important than it used to be, perhaps because pure theory has declined in influence. For this same reason, the Rand Journal and Review of Economic Studies, while both still very good journals, have lost their previous luster. Journal of Economic Theory mattered in the 1970s, but it has fallen off a cliff."
A point that you seem to be missing is that what you call "pure theory" is a set of articles that are so mathematically complex that they are highly unlikely to ever yield operational insights, for exactly the reasons that Donald F. Gordon explained in: "Operational propositions in economic theory", Journal of Political Economy, 1955, vol. 63, pp. 150-161. For a recent empirical investigation of Don Gordon's predicted negative relationship between mathematically complexity and operationalism see Coelho and McClure's 2005 article in the Southern Journal of Economics, Vol. 71, no. 3.
Posted by: jmcclure at Jun 15, 2006 10:27:32 AM
Economic Journal Watch has stepped into the void that was created when the top journals in economics majorly moved away from hosting intellectual exchange via comments, replies and rejoinders. This bodes extremely well for the economics profession, as does this Marginal Revolution blog, because there is much to be learned from marginal tinkering with economic studies, models, and ideas. When the AER announce that is would shun notes and comments in the early 80s, its editors expression indicated that they place more faith in their abilities to recognize quality by publishing more "longer" papers that would make major contributions. This was a reversal of traditions. In the 60s and 70s, it was common to see 30% of the AER devoted to critical commentary (comments, replies, and rejoinders). The percentage is less than half that now. Is it any surprise that the AER's market share of impacted adjusted citations fell markedly during the 80s and 90s?
The success of EJW attests to the error of the top journals in substituting out of the incremental contributions that comments, replies and rejoinders constitute and into "longer" contributions that the editors said they believed would make greater impact upon the profession. The losses in readership by the top journals have been gains to EJW. Importantly, the tradition of relying upon incrementalism (marginalism) to advance knowledge in economics has been (and is being) preserved, albeit in non-traditional outlets.
Posted by: jim at Jun 20, 2006 9:28:41 AM
From the EJW homepage:
"The electronic triannual Econ Journal Watch publishes Comments on articles appearing in economics journals and serves as a forum about economics research and the economics profession. EJW watches the journals for inappropriate assumptions, weak chains of argument, phony claims of relevance, and omissions of pertinent truths. Pointed, constructive criticism requires an independent forum and an accessible and timely medium. Other material including essays, reflections, investigations, and classic critiques speak to the nature and character of economics. EJW applies theories of failure—market, government, organizational—to the practices and institutions of economists."
Posted by: jim at Jun 20, 2006 9:31:35 AM
I don't think the change in policy regarding comments at the
top journals has had much to do with this decline in "comment
share." I think it has more to do with the rise of competing,
serious journals.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 20, 2006 12:02:13 PM
Barkley,
The thing you want to remember is that although there has been an explosion of new journals, that each new journal arising not only attracts cites, but makes them. That is, the situation is not analogous to say a new gasoline station opening in a town with a stabe population.
Posted by: jim at Jun 20, 2006 12:49:24 PM
Barkley,
You wrote:
"I think it has more to do with the rise of competing,
serious journals."
What makes for a serious competitor? One thing that can makes any journal a more serious competitor to Journal XYZ is if XYZ's true quality declines. To the extent that external monitoring at, say, the AER (via an unprejudiced willingness to publish critical commentary by editors) improved its quality, the explicit editorial bias against critical commentary has reduced the quality of the AER thereby making other journals more "serious" as competitors. That is the rise of others can simply be because of the fall in the traditionally "top" journals.
Posted by: jim at Jun 20, 2006 3:04:55 PM
jim,
What kills your argument is that the citation rate of your
favored engine, EJW, is nearly zero. Almost nobody cites it.
I do not see that one needs to argue that the AER and the JPE
have "declined," if the Journal of Econometrics and the Journal
of Public Economics or the Journal of Economic Perspectives is
going up. There are simply more papers being written and published
and not enough room for them all in the "top journals," whatever
those are. Maybe all these extra papers are not as good as those
wonderful ones that needed commenting on in the good old days.
But if in fact there are simply more high quality papers, it
may be only a relative decline that is involved for the top
journals, not an absolute one as implied by the posters here.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 20, 2006 4:34:25 PM
Barkley,
EJW is being widely read. Check out the web page there and you can find statistics on downloads.
Regarding your claim that "almost nobody cites it", my question is how do you know this? Furthermore it is only a few years old, so one can hardly expect there to have been mega-citations to it. My theory is certainly that EJW will have an important impact on the economics profession. Unfortunately, a reasonable test must allow enough time to pass for a large enough sample of published articles there to be accessed. That is, I do not think that, give the newness of the journal, a reasonable test can be fashioned about its impact.
Posted by: jim at Jun 20, 2006 6:13:44 PM
jim,
I know because I keep track of up-to-date citation studies,
and it is not on them.
Now, there may be a problem with those because the studies
may arbitrarily leave it off because it is not in SSCI or
whatever. However, I have another source, possibly imperfect.
I edit a fairly general journal that gets about two submissions
a day. I see lots of bibliographies. I think I have seen it
cited once. That is not very impressive.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 20, 2006 6:20:00 PM
Barkley,
Citations studies you say, bah humbug. Did you read what I wrote about EJW
being a new journal? Come on, I didn't write it for myself. Did you take
a look at the readership stats at the EJW web page? Come on, I didn't
write this for myself. I am trying to help you understand the
basis for my working hypothesis, but if you don't have an open mind
there is no way.
Posted by: jim at Jun 20, 2006 8:13:32 PM
Barkley,
You wrote:
"I edit a fairly general journal that gets about two submissions
a day. I see lots of bibliographies. I think I have seen it
cited once. That is not very impressive."
So you work for a competitor of EJW, is this correct? If you are a normal
person, you are loyal to your current employer and may not be completely
objective.
I must admit, though, in all honesty that having published a number of
articles in EJW, I may not be completely objective either.
Posted by: jim at Jun 20, 2006 8:53:30 PM
jim,
I am a competitor of the JPE and the AER also,
but I have said that their declining share of
cites does not indicate a decline in quality.
I call it as I see it, not to plug my journal.
Did you see me even naming it? It is hardly
serious competition.
BTW, there is a rather similar issue arising
regarding the newer and rapidly spreading electronic
journals, such as those published by B.P.E. They
are getting a lot more attention than EJW, with all
kinds of people forecasting that they will replace
older journals. Maybe they will, but so far, I also
see damned few citations of papers appearing them.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 20, 2006 9:20:44 PM
Barkley,
Again, the day is new for EJW and the other electronic outlets. Time will tell us which of us
is correct and incorrect.
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