IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v52y2014i4p1322-1340.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Which Journal Rankings Best Explain Academic Salaries? Evidence From The University Of California

Author

Listed:
  • JOHN GIBSON
  • DAVID L. ANDERSON
  • JOHN TRESSLER

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="ecin12107-abs-0001"> The ranking of an academic journal is important to authors, universities, journal publishers, and research funders. Rankings are gaining prominence as countries adopt regular research assessment exercises that especially reward publication in high-impact journals. Yet even within a rankings-oriented discipline like economics there is no agreement on how aggressively lower-ranked journals are down-weighted and in how wide is the universe of journals considered. Moreover, since it is typically less costly for authors to cite superfluous references, whether of their own volition or prompted by editors, than it is to ignore relevant ones, rankings based on citations may be easily manipulated. In contrast, when the merits of publication in one journal or another are debated during hiring, promotion, and salary decisions, the evaluators are choosing over actions with costly consequences. We therefore look to the academic labor market, using data on economists in the University of California system to relate their lifetime publications in 700 different academic journals to salary. We test amongst various sets of journal rankings, and publication discount rates, to see which are most congruent with the returns implied by the academic labor market. (JEL A14, I23, J44)

Suggested Citation

  • John Gibson & David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2014. "Which Journal Rankings Best Explain Academic Salaries? Evidence From The University Of California," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(4), pages 1322-1340, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:52:y:2014:i:4:p:1322-1340
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecin.2014.52.issue-4
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Glenn Ellison, 2013. "How Does the Market Use Citation Data? The Hirsch Index in Economics," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 63-90, July.
    2. Pantelis Kalaitzidakis & Theofanis P. Mamuneas & Thanasis Stengos, 2011. "An updated ranking of academic journals in economics," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 44(4), pages 1525-1538, November.
    3. Sauer, Raymond D, 1988. "Estimates of the Returns to Quality and Coauthorship in Economic Academia," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 855-866, August.
    4. M. H. Pesaran, 1974. "On the General Problem of Model Selection," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(2), pages 153-171.
    5. Rabah Amir & Malgorzata Knauff, 2008. "Ranking Economics Departments Worldwide on the Basis of PhD Placement," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(1), pages 185-190, August.
    6. Christiana E. Hilmer & Michael J. Hilmer, 2005. "How Do Journal Quality, Co-Authorship, and Author Order Affect Agricultural Economists' Salaries?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(2), pages 509-523.
    7. Chia‐Lin Chang & Michael McAleer & Les Oxley, 2011. "What Makes A Great Journal Great In Economics? The Singer Not The Song," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 326-361, April.
    8. Kalaitzidakis, P. & Mamuneas, T.P. & Stengos, T., 2003. "Rankings of Academic Journals and Institutions," Working Papers 2003-8, University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance.
    9. Vuong, Quang H, 1989. "Likelihood Ratio Tests for Model Selection and Non-nested Hypotheses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 307-333, March.
    10. Andrew J. Oswald, 2007. "An Examination of the Reliability of Prestigious Scholarly Journals: Evidence and Implications for Decision‐Makers," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(293), pages 21-31, February.
    11. Bernt Bratsberg & James F. Ragan Jr. & John T. Warren, 2003. "Negative Returns to Seniority: New Evidence in Academic Markets," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(2), pages 306-323, January.
    12. Pierre-Philippe Combes & Laurent Linnemer, 2003. "Where are the Economists Who Publish? Publication Concentration and Rankings in Europe Based on Cumulative Publications," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(6), pages 1250-1308, December.
    13. Pierre-Philippe Combes & Laurent Linnemer, 2010. "Inferring Missing Citations: A Quantitative Multi-Criteria Ranking of all Journals in Economics," Working Papers halshs-00520325, HAL.
    14. Joseph Macri & Dipendra Sinha, 2006. "Rankings Methodology for International Comparisons of Institutions and Individuals: an Application to Economics in Australia and New Zealand," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 111-156, February.
    15. Liebowitz, S J & Palmer, J P, 1984. "Assessing the Relative Impacts of Economic Journals," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 77-88, March.
    16. Pantelis Kalaitzidakis & Theofanis P. Mamuneas & Thanasis Stengos, 2003. "Rankings of Academic Journals and Institutions in Economics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(6), pages 1346-1366, December.
    17. John Gibson, 2000. "Research productivity in New Zealand university economics departments: Comment and update," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(1), pages 73-87.
    18. William J. Moore & Robert J. Newman & Dek Terrell, 2007. "Academic Pay in the United Kingdom and the United States: The Differential Returns to Productivity and the Lifetime Earnings Gap," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(3), pages 717-732, January.
    19. Moore, William J & Newman, Robert J & Turnbull, Geoffrey K, 2001. "Reputational Capital and Academic Pay," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(4), pages 663-671, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John Gibson & David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2017. "Citations Or Journal Quality: Which Is Rewarded More In The Academic Labor Market?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1945-1965, October.
    2. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2017. "Researcher rank stability across alternative output measurement schemes in the context of a time limited research evaluation: the New Zealand case," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(45), pages 4542-4553, September.
    3. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2013. "The Relevance of the “h-” and “g-” Index to Economics in the Context of A Nation-Wide Research Evaluation Scheme: The New Zealand Case," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(1), pages 81-94, March.
    4. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2011. "Ranking Economics Departments In Terms Of Residual Productivity: New Zealand Economics Departments, 2000–2006," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(4), pages 157-168, December.
    5. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2015. "Are Researcher Rankings Stable Across Alternative Output Measurement Schemes in the Context of a Time Limited Research Evaluation? The New Zealand Case," Working Papers in Economics 15/10, University of Waikato.
    6. Bräuninger Michael & Haucap Justus & Muck Johannes, 2011. "Was lesen und schätzen deutschsprachige Ökonomen heute?," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 12(4), pages 339-371, November.
    7. Wohlrabe, Klaus, 2016. "Taking the Temperature: A Meta-Ranking of Economics Journals," MPRA Paper 68933, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2008. "Research Output in New Zealand Economics Department 2000-2006," Working Papers in Economics 08/05, University of Waikato.
    9. Chagas , André Luis Squarize, 2017. "Publish or Perish: um ranking de revistas da subárea de Economia Regional e Urbana para os pesquisadores brasileiros," Revista Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos, Associação Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos (ABER), vol. 11(4), pages 515-536.
    10. Frank Neri & Joan R. Rodgers, 2013. "Eagles and Turkeys: Human Capital Externalities, Departmental Co-authorship and Research Productivity," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3-4), pages 171-189, December.
    11. Frank Neri & Joan R. Rodgers, 2006. "Ranking Australian Economics Departments by Research Productivity," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 82(s1), pages 74-84, September.
    12. David Anderson & John Tressler, 2008. "Research output in New Zealand economics departments 2000-2006: A stock approach," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(2), pages 155-189.
    13. José Alberto Molina & Alfredo Ferrer & David Iñiguez & Alejandro Rivero & Gonzalo Ruiz & Alfonso Tarancón, 2020. "Network analysis to measure academic performance in economics," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 995-1018, March.
    14. Lutz Bornmann & Alexander Butz & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2018. "What are the top five journals in economics? A new meta-ranking," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(6), pages 659-675, February.
    15. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2010. "The Merits of Using Citation-Based Journal Weighting Schemes to Measure Research Performance in Economics: The Case of New Zealand," Working Papers in Economics 10/03, University of Waikato.
    16. Bräuninger, Michael & Haucap, Justus & Muck, Johannes, 2011. "Was lesen und schätzen Ökonomen im Jahr 2011?," DICE Ordnungspolitische Perspektiven 18, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    17. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2009. "The Excellence in Research for Australia Scheme: An Evaluation of the Draft Journal Weights for Economics," Working Papers in Economics 09/07, University of Waikato.
    18. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2018. "Citations in Economics: Measurement, Uses, and Impacts," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(1), pages 115-156, March.
    19. Frank Neri & Joan Rodgers, 2012. "Human capital externalities, departmental co-authorship and research productivity," Economics Working Papers wp12-05, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    20. J. Atsu Amegashie, 2020. "Citations And Incentives In Academic Contests," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(3), pages 1233-1244, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:52:y:2014:i:4:p:1322-1340. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.