"A" Ranked Publications?

[abandoned]

I hear that journals are divided into "A" publications, "B" publications, etc.

I have seen rankings by field (e.g. for me, economics and business publications) based on various factors (citations, influence factor, etc.)

Is there a strict definition of "A" publications? Where do I find such a list if one exists for business (marketing) and economics publications.

Edited January 25, 2012 by 3worldman

[orangeMan]

No sure about the ranking. But http://www.harzing.com/jql.htm is often the benchmark. The impact factor is the most important one. The list confirms what you already know (probably), American Economic Review is one of the most prestigious journal for economists, Academy of Management for management researchers, Journal of Finance for financial economists, etc.

[Behavioral]

I hear that journals are divided into "A" publications, "B" publications, etc.

I have seen rankings by field (e.g. for me, economics and business publications) based on various factors (citations, influence factor, etc.)

Is there a strict definition of "A" publications? Where do I find such a list if one exists for business (marketing) and economics publications.

It's strict for Marketing (in no particular order): Journal of Marketing (JM), Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), Marketing Science (MS)

If you're doing quant/modeling: American Economic Review (AER) and Econometrica are the two A-level journals.

If you're doing behavioral/psychology: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), Psychological Science (PsychSci) are considered the two fairly agreed-upon A-level journals

[JonathanEdwards]

There’s a very specific ranking by discipline done by the European Reference Index for the Humanities. While it’s designed for EU nations to rank their own academic contributions, they list American journals.

http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/erih-european-reference-index-for-the-humanities.html

W.

[abandoned]

Yeah, I have seen plenty of ranking for journals, with all sorts of metrics, but was unsure where the dividing line between a so called "A" and "B" publication really falls.

[JonathanEdwards]

ERIH ranks as International 1, International 2, and National, based on committee's evaluation of the importance of the work coming out of those journals. There seems to be consensus about the 'NAT' label, but the furor between 'INT1' and 'INT2' rankings will probablly never end. While I think the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) in the United Kingdom is commendably trying to provide a level playing field, there's a certain amount of subjectivity that can't be removed from these evaluations. The good thing is that they aren't static: some journals were able to move up in the rankings between ERIH 2007 and 2011.

Too many acronyms... must follow up with coffee...

[fluttering]

The ERA (Excellence in Research in Australia) previously had a journal ranking system that classified journals as A*, A, B, C or unranked. This ranking system was dropped last year. The idea was supposed to be that the ranks would indicate the best journals in each subject area, since other rating metrics such as impact factor have different standards in different fields.