Tuesday, February 20, 2007

New William & Mary Rankings Are Out

http://www.wm.edu/irtheoryandpractice/trip/surveyreport06-07.pdf

We may adjust some of our scoring based on this, although I think it reinforces some of our decisions. Journals, this may affect more than others, but they do segregate Cambridge, Princeton and Cornell as the top three UPs. We may end up retiering based on this list. Stay tuned, and comments always welcome.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

At the lower end of the scale, what is the criteria for distinguishing between a "peer reviewed scholarly journal" and a non-scholarly journal? If an academic edits it and the journal advertises itself as "referred" does it count as a scholarly journal?

I ask because some of the public policy journals, such as Policy Review and even the National Interest, from time to time publish important pieces, yet are self identified as non-peer reviewed journals. On the other hand, I think someone already used this edample, the journals put out by the various U.S. Military War Colleges (i.e. Naval War College Review) identify themselves as referred or peer reviewed. Do they then count as scholarly and the others not?

Same point could be applied to many of the "small time" journals at the bottom of a field. Does publishing in a peer-reviewed journal with a Thompson rank of 49/50 and an academic editor get you 30 points when the Washington Quarterly does not?

Anonymous said...

Follow up to above...do you count electronic journals that are peer-reviewed and/or edited by academics?

All of this goes to a strategy question: Despite the payoff for publishing in one of the "Big Four" journals, a prolific scholar publishing in lesser known journals could still rack up a lot of points and would be worth drafting...