Electronic Markets on the impact factor
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EDITORIAL
Electronic Markets on the impact factor Rainer Alt 1 & Carsta Militzer-Horstmann 1 & Hans-Dieter Zimmermann 2
Published online: 22 April 2016 # Institute of Applied Informatics at University of Leipzig 2016
Dear readers of Electronic Markets, Most academic journals will have some kind of reference regarding the Journal Impact Factor (IF) in their mission statement or in their self-description. In fact, the IF has emerged as the key Bcurrency^ in academia and journals as well as researchers seem to focus more on the IF figure than on the insights in the respective journals or articles. In many discussions, it seems that the mere fact that a manuscript is accepted in an academic journal with a high IF is an end in itself. Many researchers only report on the number of publications in topjournals and are so impressed that a discussion on the findings of the research are no longer an issue in the discussions. A similar phenomenon may be observed when researchers report on the acquisition of projects: the mere amount of a grant strongly distracts from taking a closer look at the topics and the results of the project. Obviously, currencies are standardized symbols for exchanging value among many actors. Similar to how money quantifies the value of the goods that are subject of a transaction, measures for academic research should represent a quantitative measure for the contribution of a journal or a specific
article to scientific progress. In applying the same methodology to all scientific disciplines, the IF should provide orientation in the highly diversified academic world. While the absolute number of academic journals is difficult to determine, comprehensive research by Larson and von Ins (2010) concluded that Bthe number of serious scientific journals (…) most likely is about 24,000^. According to Ware and Mabe there were B28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals in mid 2012^ in the scientific, technical and medical market alone (Ware and Mabe 2012). Taking only the journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) yields some 3,217 journals for the various social science disciplines. Obviously, this still exceeds the ability of even knowledgeable scientists to assess the value of individual journals. In view of this plethora of journals, researchers from other fields, decision-makers in libraries or interested readers from outside the academic world value guidance on which journals to read, university librarians appreciate the guidance on which journals to purchase and academics value the orientation in qualification processes.
Navigating the jungle * Rainer Alt [email protected] Carsta Militzer-Horstmann [email protected] Hans-Dieter Zimmermann [email protected]
1
Information Systems Institute, University of Leipzig Grimmaische Str. 12, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
2
FHS St. Gallen, University of Applied Sciences, Rosenbergstrasse 59, 9001 St. Gallen, Switzerland
A first development that may be observed is a well-known instrument from marketing.
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