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Identifying patterns and structural influences in the scientific communication of business knowledge

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Abstract

This study uses several quantitative techniques to enable a multidimensional analysis of 47 key business journals by analyzing the scientific communication patterns and structural influences of these journals. Apart from using clustering techniques to establish research clusters in the Business domain, we apply a refined PageRank method by differentiating between the citation types to enable a cross-sectional evaluation of the selected journals. The results indicate that the five most influential journals are from Finance and Economics. The selected Finance journals are knowledge hubs and the selected Economics journals are knowledge sources when ISI’s entire journal database is considered. However, within the Business domain, the selected Finance journals appear to be high impact knowledge hubs while the selected Economics journals appear to be high impact journals despite weak citation activity. All in all, such analyses are beneficial to scholars when selecting publication outlets to showcase their research, and to agencies such Financial Times and Bloomberg when selecting their journals basket for their annual journal evaluation exercises.

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Notes

  1. Examples include, but are not limited to, DuBois and Reeb (2000) who evaluated international business journals; Baumgartner and Pieters (2003) who examined the quality of marketing journals; Pieters and Baumgartner (2002), as well as, Palacios-Huerta and Volij (2004) assessed the quality of economics journals; Xu et al. (2011) rated operations research/management sciences journals; Cheang et al. (2014b), as well as, Podsakoff et al. (2005) evaluated the quality of management journals; Brown (2003) evaluated accounting and finance journals, while Bonner et al. (2006) identified the influence of accounting journals, and Oltehten et al. (2005) evaluated the quality of finance journals.

  2. Financial Times’ 45 selected journals are listed in Appendix 1.

  3. Bloomberg’s 20 selected journals are listed in Appendix 2.

  4. UTD’s 24 selected journals are listed in Appendix 3.

  5. For instance, there have been at least 15 survey studies to evaluate MIS journals since 1980 (Cheang 2014) and at least seven survey studies to evaluate OR/MS journals since 1985 (Olson 2005). In other examples, Lowe and Locke (2005) employed a web-based survey to examine 32 accounting journals while Oltheten et al. (2005) conducted a worldwide survey on the quality of finance journals.

  6. Internal citations refer to citations by journals in a specific domain.

  7. Self-citations refer to citations by journals that cite articles from the same journal.

  8. Examples include Goh et al. (1996, 1997), and Vokurka (1996).

  9. Namely www.journal-ranking.com (developed by Lim et al. 2007), Eigenfactor (see http://www.eigenfactor.org/) and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) (see http://www.scimagojr.com/).

  10. We also provide clustering results with M being equal to 2, 4 and 5 in Appendix 4 and possible explanations of identified clusters. Intuitively, there are no large variations among the clustering results with different values of M. Having said that, a discussion of the clustering results with different values of M are presented in Section “Analysis of Clusters”.

  11. Details of the hierarchical results of our clustering analysis with different values of M and explanations of the identified clusters are supplied in Appendix 4.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Center of Management Science and Engineering, School of Management and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    Brenda Cheang & Andrew Lim

  2. Department of Management Sciences, College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Ave, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Chongshou Li & Zhenzhen Zhang

Authors
  1. Brenda Cheang
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  2. Chongshou Li
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  3. Andrew Lim
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  4. Zhenzhen Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chongshou Li.

Additional information

Andrew Lim is currently on no pay leave from City University of Hong Kong.

Appendices

Appendix 1: 45 journals used in FT research rank

The list below details the 45 journals used by the Financial Times in compiling the Business School research rank, included in both the Global MBA and EMBA rankings.

  1. 1.

    Academy of Management Journal (Academy of Management)

  2. 2.

    Academy of Management Perspectives (AMP)

  3. 3.

    Academy of Management Review (Academy of Management)

  4. 4.

    Accounting, Organisations and Society (Elsevier)

  5. 5.

    Accounting Review (American Accounting Association)

  6. 6.

    Administrative Science Quarterly (Cornell University)

  7. 7.

    American Economic Review (American Economic Association)

  8. 8.

    California Management Review (UC Berkeley)

  9. 9.

    Contemporary Accounting Research (Wiley)

  10. 10.

    Econometrica (Econometric Society, Wiley)

  11. 11.

    Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (Baylor University, Wiley)

  12. 12.

    Harvard Business Review (Harvard Business School Publishing)

  13. 13.

    Human Resource Management (Wiley)

  14. 14.

    Information Systems Research (Informs)

  15. 15.

    Journal of Accounting and Economics (Elsevier)

  16. 16.

    Journal of Accounting Research (University of Chicago, Wiley)

  17. 17.

    Journal of Applied Psychology (American Psychological Association)

  18. 18.

    Journal of Business Ethics (Kluwer Academic)

  19. 19.

    Journal of Business Venturing (Elsevier)

  20. 20.

    Journal of Consumer Psychology (Elsevier)

  21. 21.

    Journal of Consumer Research (University of Chicago)

  22. 22.

    Journal of Finance (Wiley)

  23. 23.

    Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (Cambridge University Press)

  24. 24.

    Journal of Financial Economics (Elsevier)

  25. 25.

    Journal of International Business Studies (Academy of International Business)

  26. 26.

    Journal of Management Studies (Wiley)

  27. 27.

    27 Journal of Marketing (American Marketing Association)

  28. 28.

    Journal of Marketing Research (American Marketing Association)

  29. 29.

    Journal of Operations Management (Elsevier)

  30. 30.

    Journal of Political Economy (University of Chicago)

  31. 31.

    Journal of the American Statistical Association (American Statistical Association)

  32. 32.

    Management Science (Informs)

  33. 33.

    Marketing Science (Informs)

  34. 34.

    MIS Quarterly (Management Information Systems Research Centre, University of Minnesota)

  35. 35.

    Operations Research (Informs)

  36. 36.

    Organization Science (Informs)

  37. 37.

    Organization Studies (SAGE)

  38. 38.

    Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes (Academic Press)

  39. 39.

    Production and Operations Management (Wiley)

  40. 40.

    Quarterly Journal of Economics (MIT)

  41. 41.

    Rand Journal of Economics (The Rand Corporation, Wiley)

  42. 42.

    Review of Accounting Studies (Springer)

  43. 43.

    Review of Financial Studies (Oxford University Press)

  44. 44.

    Sloan Management Review (MIT)

  45. 45.

    Strategic Management Journal (Wiley)

Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/3405a512-5cbb-11e1-8f1f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2lSDcJben

Appendix 2: 20 top academic journals in business week

How is the intellectual capital score determined?

Bloomberg Businessweek scours 20 top academic journals for articles published by each school’s faculty, reviewing all editions published in the previous 4 years. The journals are The Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, Operations Research, Information Systems Research, Journal of Finance, American Economic Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Marketing Research, Strategic Management Journal, Accounting Review, Academy of Management Journal, Production & Operations Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Consumer Research, Review of Financial Studies, Administrative Science Quarterly and Marketing Science. Extended articles receive three points; short articles receive one point.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-19/faq-full-time-mba-rankings#p2

Appendix 3: 24 journals used in UTD ranking

  • The Accounting Review

  • Journal of Accounting and Economics

  • Journal of Accounting Research

  • Journal of Finance

  • Journal of Financial Economics

  • The Review of Financial Studies

  • Information Systems Research

  • Journal on Computing

  • MIS Quarterly

  • Journal of Consumer Research

  • Journal of Marketing

  • Journal of Marketing Research

  • Marketing Science

  • Management Science

  • Operations Research

  • Journal of Operations Management

  • Manufacturing and Service Operations Management

  • Production and Operations Management

  • Academy of Management Journal

  • Academy of Management Review

  • Administrative Science Quarterly

  • Organization Science

  • Journal of International Business Studies

  • Strategic Management Journal

Source: http://jindal.utdallas.edu/the-utd-top-100-business-school-research-rankings//index.php

Appendix 4: Hierarchical results of standard ward’s clustering procedure

In this Appendix, we supply Hierarchical results of Standard Ward clustering analysis for M with values of 2, 3, 4 and 5. We also provide explanations of identified clusters in the following Figures.

M = 2

figure a

M = 3

figure b

M = 4

figure c

M = 5

figure d

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Cheang, B., Li, C., Lim, A. et al. Identifying patterns and structural influences in the scientific communication of business knowledge. Scientometrics 103, 159–189 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1518-x

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