Identification of home bias in journal ranking lists

Journal evaluation is essential for scientific research, influencing academic assessment, journal reputation, and the development of researchers. However, significant differences in journal quality evaluations across countries often contain ‘home bias’. To identify this bias, we propose an improved method based on the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, which has traditionally been used to analyse wage gaps and discrimination. Rather than relying on a hypothetical non-discrimination state that considers only the journal rankings of a single country, we employ the Weighted Average Percentile (WAP) approach to integrate journal rankings from multiple countries, thereby reflecting the evaluation consensus from a global perspective. This revision adapts the methodology to journal evaluation, offering a more comprehensive and balanced assessment of academic market expectations, and bringing it closer to an unbiased state in the journal evaluation process. Our analysis incorporated four national journal lists, comprising a total of 1,188 selected journals. We find that the Association of Business School (ABS) lists from the United Kingdom (UK) organizations exhibit 'home bias', favouring domestic journals and undervaluing foreign ones. This bias may impact the fairness of global scholarly communication and journal evaluation. Recognizing these home biases and transnational limitations is crucial when using journal lists.