Ranking SCM Journals: ABS Academic Journal Guide 2015
Note: The following blog post is about an older version of the Academic Journal Guide (“ABS list”). The 2018 AJG is discussed in another blog post (follow this link).
The UK-based Association of Business Schools (ABS) has published its Academic Journal Guide. It is the successor of the often criticized Academic Journal Quality Guide. And this is how the new Guide ranks supply chain management journals: The only grade 4* (“excellent”) journal is: Journal of Operations Management. Other “top journals” (grade 4) are: International Journal of Operations & Production Management and Production and Operations Management. Examples of “highly regarded” journals (grade 3) in the list are: Journal of Supply Chain Management and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal. Some other “well regarded” journals (grade 2) are: International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Journal of Business Logistics and Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management.
Given the low grades of some journals with high impact factors and considering their reputation in our field, I am not convinced of the quality of this new ABS list. For example, in spite of its reputation as a leading SCM journal and its higher impact factor, ABS ranks JBL two (!) grades lower than IJOPM. Another ranking, VHB-JOURQUAL, seems to reflect the theoretical and methodological breadth of our discipline much better – maybe because it is based on the opinions of several hundred business researchers rather than an expert panel like in the case of ABS. However, qualitative rankings like ABS and JOURQUAL can be a good supplement to quantitative rankings based on impact factors.
But always keep in mind that journal rankings have a downside and should not be used as criteria for judging a researcher (they can only be used for judging a journal, in fact). I fear that the new ABS ranking will serve as exactly such a criterion in many business schools now. Isn’t the quality of our own articles a much better criterion than the average quality of all articles published in a journal (including the very bad and very good ones)? But this would require the members of an appointment committee to read what the candidates have actually published – maybe too much of an effort? And, if paradigm shifts often start in low-ranked journals, should our incentive system really prevent us from publishing in journals with ABS ranks below 3?
New Editors for the Journal of Business Logistics (Guest Post by C.M. Wallenburg, WHU)
In my recent post, I wrote that the CSCMP’s Educators’ Conference is a forum to catch the latest news from our field. This year, among these news was the announcement of the new Editors-in-Chief for the Journal of Business Logistics. In this guest post, Carl Marcus Wallenburg, one of the European Editors of the journal, provides additional information.
At this year’s CSCMP’s Educators’ Conference the new incoming Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Logistics (JBL) were announced. Starting January 2016, Walter Zinn and Thomas Goldsby, both Professors at The Ohio State University (OSU), will be in charge of this premier supply chain journal. Before that the two will work closely with the current editors Matthew Waller (University of Arkansas) and Stan Fawcett (Weber State University) to facilitate a smooth transition to the new editorial team. I will continue to support the journal and new editors in my function as European Editor. One cornerstone of our European activities is the European Research Seminar (ERS) which I co-chair together with Britta Gammelgaard from Copenhagen Business School, who also serves as European Editor. Next year’s ERS will be held in Copenhagen on April 23 and 24, 2015.
Carl Marcus Wallenburg is a chaired professor at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, where he serves as Director of the Kühne-Institute for Logistics Management.
Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2014
Every year, Emerald asks the editorial teams of several of its journals to nominate an Outstanding Paper and one or more Highly Commended Papers. This year’s winners have now been announced. These selections form part of the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2014. Awarded papers related to supply chain management are, for example, about logistics strategy and logistics integration (authors: Spillan et al.), supplier choice criteria (Voss), ocean shipping (Harrison and Fichtinger) and SME supply chain portfolios (Tokman et al.) [all published in IJLM], sustainability (Winter and Knemeyer), supply chain resilience (Wieland and Wallenburg), supply chain counterproductive work behaviors (Thornton et al.) and supply chain integration (Jin et al.) [IJPDLM], and pre-positioning commodities (Bemley et al.) and services operations management (Heaslip) [JHLSCM]. The winning articles are now freely available until the end of May, 2014. (See also: Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2013.)
Measuring Research Impact: h-index and h-rate
As I have highlighted in a recent post (Interesting × Important = Impact), research needs to be impactful. But how can research impact be measured? IJPDLM has now published an article by Rao, Iyengar and Goldsby that answers exactly this question: On the Measurement and Benchmarking of Research Impact among Active Logistics Scholars. The authors compare “several commonly used measures of research impact to identify one that best normalizes for the effect of career stage”. One of these measures is the h-index. However, early career researchers are put at a relative disadvantage, as the h-index can only rise with time. This has led to the h-rate, which divides the h-index by the academic age of the scholar. Based on bibliometric data, the authors find that “[t]he h-rate provides the most appropriate basis for comparing research impact across logistics scholars of various career stages” and they provide benchmark h-rates for scholars to identify their research impact.
Introducing the Journal of Operations Management (Guest Post by the Editors-in-Chief)
In today’s guest post, Thomas Y. Choi and Daniel Guide, Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of Operations Management, provide an introduction to their journal, which is a leading journal of our field.
The Journal of Operations Management (JOM) is an empirical journal whose mission is to advance the theories of operations management (OM) and supply chain management (SCM). The goal is to publish original, high quality, OM and SCM empirical research that will have a significant impact on theory and practice. Regular articles accepted for publication in JOM must have clear implications for operations managers based on one or more of a variety of rigorous research methodologies. It is the premier ranked journal, repeatedly ranked above other journals in the discipline. It is one of the OM-SCM focused empirical journals used by both the Financial Times in its rankings of Business Schools as well as by the University of Texas at Dallas in its assessment of scholarship. In terms of citation share, in 2011 JOM was given the following ISI category ranking: 1/73 in “Operations Research & Management Science” and 7/166 in “Management”. The current impact factor (IF) is 4.40 and the five year IF is 7.13.
Thomas Y. Choi is a Professor of Supply Chain Management at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. Daniel Guide is a Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University. They have published their research in numerous academic and managerial journals.
SCM Best Paper Award Winners 2013 (2/2)
Three more leading journals of our field have announced the winners of their best paper awards. First, the Decision Sciences Journal has selected the article Managing Differentiation-Integration Duality in Supply Chain Integration by Terjesen, Patel and Sanders for its Best Paper Award for 2012. Second, the article The Competitive Determinants of a Firm’s Environmental Management Activities: Evidence from US Manufacturing Industries by Hofer, Cantor and Dai has won the Journal of Operations Management Jack Meredith Best Paper Award. Finally, the judges for the 2012 Harold E. Fearon Best Paper Award were evenly split between two articles. Therefore, the Journal of Supply Chain Management has announced two winning articles: Supply Chain-Wide Consequences of Transaction Risks and Their Contractual Solutions: Towards an Extended Transaction Cost Economics Framework by Wever, Wognum, Trienekens and Omta, and Who Owns the Customer? Disentangling Customer Loyalty in Indirect Distribution Channels by Eggert, Henseler and Hollmann. Congratulations to all winners! (part 1/2)
Terjesen, S., Patel, P.C., & Sanders, N.R. (2012). Managing Differentiation-Integration Duality in Supply Chain Integration. Decision Sciences, 43 (2), 303-339 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5915.2011.00345.x
Hofer, C., Cantor, D.E., & Dai, J. (2012). The Competitive Determinants of a Firm’s Environmental Management Activities: Evidence from US Manufacturing Industries. Journal of Operations Management, 30 (1–2), 69-84 DOI: 10.1016/j.jom.2011.06.002
Wever, M., Wognum, P.M., Trienekens, J.H., & Omta, S.W.F. (2012). Supply Chain-Wide Consequences of Transaction Risks and Their Contractual Solutions: Towards an Extended Transaction Cost Economics Framework. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 48 (1), 73-91 DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-493X.2011.03253.x
Eggert, A., Henseler, J., & Hollmann, S. (2012). Who Owns the Customer? Disentangling Customer Loyalty in Indirect Distribution Channels. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 48 (2), 75-92 DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-493X.2011.03260.x
Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2013
Every year, Emerald invites journal editors “to nominate what they believe has been that title’s Outstanding Paper and up to three Highly Commended Papers from the previous year”. These papers have now been announced as part of the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2013. Papers by da Mota Pedrosa et al. on case study research, Olander and Norrman on contracts, Wieland and Wallenburg on supply chain risks, and Kaufmann et al. on debiasing efforts were nominated by IJPDLM. Papers by Kunz and Reiner, who conducted a meta-analysis, and Cozzolino et al., who conducted a case study, were nominated by JHLSCM. Papers by Seuring and Gold on content analysis, Walker and Jones on sustainable SCM, Ellinger et al. on SCM competency, and Oosterhuis et al. on goals were nominated by SCM:IJ. Papers from other journals can be found in the Outstanding Paper Awards list. Awarded papers are available on a free access until July 13th.
Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)
Some time ago, I have discussed identifiers for a specific edition of a book (ISBN), serials and other continuing resources (ISSN), and content objects like journal articles (DOI). But did you already know the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)? According to the ORCID website, it “provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized”. Hereby, a unique 16-digit code (e.g. 0000-0003-0010-4240) is used to identify a researcher. In a Nature editorial back in 2009 it was discussed that an academic-reward system would be tied less heavily to publications and citations if an author ID system like ORCID gained widespread support. This could soon become true, as ORCID is supported by important organizations, including publishers like Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley.
SCM Best Paper Award Winners 2012 (2/2)
Three more SCM-related journals have announced the winners of best paper awards. First, the Journal of Operations Management has awarded the Jack Meredith Best Paper Award to Speier and her co-authors for their article Global supply chain design considerations: Mitigating product safety and security risks. Second, the Journal of Supply Chain Management has chosen the winner of the 2011 Harold E. Fearon Best Paper Award. The winner is Information technology as an enabler of supply chain collaboration: A dynamic-capabilities perspective by Fawcett et al.; other finalists are Making sense of supply disruption risk research: A conceptual framework grounded in enactment theory by Ellis et al. and Managing buyer–supplier relationships: Empirical patterns of strategy formulation in industrial purchasing by Terpend et al. Third, the article Interorganizational system characteristics and supply chain integration: An empirical assessment by Saeed et al. was selected as the best paper published in the Decision Sciences Journal in 2010-2011. (part 1/2)
Speier, C. et al. (2011). Global supply chain design considerations: Mitigating product safety and security risks. Journal of Operations Management, 29 (7-8), 721-736 DOI: 10.1016/j.jom.2011.06.003
Fawcett, S. et al. (2011). Information technology as an enabler of supply chain collaboration: A dynamic-capabilities perspective. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 47 (1), 38-59 DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-493X.2010.03213.x
Saeed, K. et al. (2011). Interorganizational system characteristics and supply chain integration: An empirical assessment. Decision Sciences, 42 (1), 7-42 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5915.2010.00300.x
The Downside of SCM Journal Rankings
When analyzing the statistics of this blog, I find that SCM researchers appear to be very interested in posts concerning journal rankings, namely the quantitative journal ranking based on impact factors and qualitative rankings such as VHB-JOURQUAL or the ABS Academic Journal Guide 2018. I would not have published them if I wasn’t sure journal rankings can be beneficial for our research community. However, after an inspiring discussion with Alan McKinnon last week about his new article, Starry-eyed: Journal Rankings and the Future of Logistics Research (published in IJPDLM), I am more than ever convinced that our community should both acknowledge advantages and regard disadvantages of such rankings. Indeed, the ranking of journals “can skew the choice of research methodology, lengthen publication lead times, cause academics to be disloyal to the specialist journals in their field, favour theory over practical relevance and unfairly discriminate against relatively young disciplines such as logistics”, as Alan finds in his paper. So, what is your opinion?
McKinnon, Alan C. (2013). Starry-eyed: Journal Rankings and the Future of Logistics Research. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 43 (1), 6-17 https://doi.org/10.1108/09600031311293228
