Would You Forego Citations for Journal Status?
Presenting evidence from a new analysis of business and management academics, the authors explore how journal status is valued by these academics and the point at which journal status becomes more prized than academic influence.
In Praise of Those ‘Less Prestigious’ Journals
Shannon Mason and Margaret K. Merga argue that researchers should adopt more careful citation practices, as a means to broaden and contextualise what counts as ‘prestigious’ research and create a more equitable publishing environment for research outside of core anglophone countries.
Universities Are More than Their Score in Rankings Tables
Lizzie Gadd argues that any commitment to responsible research assessment needs to include action on global university rankings. She argues universities should unite around the principle of being ‘much more than their rank.’
What Research Made the Most Impact 10 Years Later?
This year, SAGE will analyze citation data for articles published in SAGE journals in 2009 to find out the most highly cited through the end of 2019. In May, we will present our inaugural 10-Year Impact Awards to the authors of the three papers with the most citations and share helpful insights we learned.
Assessing Australia’s Poor Record of Impact Assessment
Over the years, Australia has had a confused relationship with the impact agenda, with much of this grounded in the vagaries of government. When the idea of a national exercise to evaluate research was first touted in the form of the Research Quality Framework, the focus was to be on both quality and…
Why It’s So Hard to Reform Peer Review
Robert J. Marks, the director of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, argues that academic reformers are battling numerical laws that govern how incentives work. His counsel? Know your enemy!
Have We Outsourced Impact Measures to Database Providers?
Arlette Jappe, David Pithan and Thomas Heinze find that the growth in the volume of ‘evaluative citation analysis’ publications has not led to the formation of an intellectual field with strong reputational control. This has left a gap which has been filled by commercial database providers, who by selecting and distributing research metrics have gained a powerful role in defining standards of research excellence without being challenged by expert authority.
How Journal Impact Factor Affects Your Career
A new preprint was recently shared on PeerJ Preprints on the Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations. Alice Fleerackers, Juan Pablo Alperin, and Erin McKiernan discuss the investigation and the findings on how the flawed metric is currently used in tenure and promotion decisions in universities across North America.