SpringerLink
Log in

Education journal rankings: a diversity-based Author Affiliation Index assessment methodology

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Determining the reputation of academic journals is an crucial issue. The Author Affiliation Index (AAI) was proposed as a novel indicator for judging journal quality in many academic disciplines. Nevertheless, the original AAI has several potential limitations, some of which have been discussed and addressed in previous studies. In this paper, we modified the original AAI by incorporating diversity of top-notch institutions, namely the AAID, exploring how institutional diversity is related to journal quality assessment. We further conducted a quality assessment of 263 education journals indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) by applying the AAID, AAI and weighted AAI. We find that the AAID ranking possesses a low correlation coefficient with the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and Eigenfactor Score (ES). That is to say, the AAID rating has not reached a good agreement with the most popular ranking indicators JIF and ES for journals in the field of education. Moreover, we analyze the reasons for the highest AAID from the structure of complex networks. Overall, the AAID is an alternative indicator for evaluating the prestige of journals from a new perspective.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Germany)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Agrawal, V. K., Agrawal, V., & Rungtusanatham, M. (2011). Theoretical and interpretation challenges to using the author affiliation index method to rank journals. Production and Operations Management, 20(2), 280–300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bajo, E., Barbi, M., & Hillier, D. (2020). Where should I publish to get promoted? A finance journal ranking based on business school promotions. Journal of Banking and Finance, 114, 105780.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bean, D. F., & Bernardi, R. A. (2005). Estimating the ratings of journals omitted in prior quality ratings. Advances in Accounting Education, 7, 109–127.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calvo, S. T. (2017). Analysis of the journalism and communication degree programmes of the world’s top-ranked universities. Competencies, objectives and subjects. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 72, 1626–1647.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chan, K. C., Tong, J. Y., & Zhang, F. F. (2012). Accounting journal rankings, authorship patterns and the author affiliation index. Australian Accounting Review, 22(4), 407–417.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, C. R., & Huang, Y. (2007). Author Affiliation Index, finance journal ranking, and the pattern of authorship. Journal of Corporate Finance, 13(5), 1008–1026.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cronin, B., & Meho, L. I. (2008). Applying the author affiliation index to library and information science journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(11), 1861–1865.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Currie, R. R., & Pandher, G. S. (2011). Finance journal rankings and tiers: An active scholar assessment methodology. Journal of Banking and Finance, 35(1), 7–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Currie, R. R., & Pandher, G. S. (2020). Finance journal rankings: Active scholar assessment revisited. Journal of Banking and Finance, 111, 105717.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Docampo, D., & Safón, V. (2021). Journal ratings: A paper affiliation methodology. Scientometrics, 126, 8063–8090.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eagle, N., Macy, M., & Claxton, R. (2010). Network diversity and economic development. Science, 328(5981), 1029–1031.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Ferratt, T. W., Gorman, M. F., Kanet, J. J., & Salisbury, W. D. (2007). IS journal quality assessment using the author affiliation index. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 19, 710–724.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fry, T. D., & Donohue, J. M. (2014). Exploring the author affiliation index. Scientometrics, 98(3), 1647–1667.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garfield, E. (1955). Citation indexes for science: A new dimension in documentation through association of ideas. Science, 122(3159), 108–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ginieis, M., & Li, X. (2020). Ranking of Sustainability Journals Using the Author Affiliation Index and Comparison to Other Journal Metrics. Sustainability, 12, 1104.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gorman, M. F., & Kanet, J. J. (2005). Evaluating Operations Management-Related Journals via the Author Affiliation Index. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 7(1), 3–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gorman, M. F., Kanet, J. J., & Christ, D. (2011). Evaluating transportation research journal quality using the author affiliation index. Transportation journal, 50(4), 370–389.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guthrie, C. P., Everett, J. O., Vijayakumar, J., & Olds, P. R. (2012). Evaluating faculty publications in accounting Ph. D. programs: The author affiliation index as an alternative. Journal of Accounting Education, 30(3–4), 290–306.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harless, D., & Reilly, R. (1998). Revision of the journal list for doctoral designation, Unpublished report. Virginia Commonwealth University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hernandez-de Menendez, M., & Morales-Menendez, R. (2019). Technological innovations and practices in engineering education: a review. International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing, 13(2), 713–728.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences, 102(46), 16569–16572.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, J. M., & Dovidio, J. F. (2018). Change, challenge, and prospects for a diversity paradigm in social psychology. Social Issues and Policy Review, 12(1), 7–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leydesdorff, L. (2018). Diversity and interdisciplinarity: how can one distinguish and recombine disparity, variety, and balance? Scientometrics, 116, 2113–2121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leydesdorff, L., Wagner, C. S., & Bornmann, L. (2019). Interdisciplinarity as diversity in citation patterns among journals: Rao-Stirling diversity, relative variety, and the Gini coefficient. Journal of Informetrics, 13(1), 255–269.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matherly, M., & Shortridge, R. T. (2009). A pragmatic model to estimate journal quality in accounting. Journal of Accounting Education, 27(1), 14–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCann, K. S. (2000). The diversity-stability debate. Nature, 405(6783), 228–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mingers, J., & Yang, L. (2017). Evaluating journal quality: A review of journal citation indicators and ranking in business and management. European Journal of Operational Research, 257(1), 323–337.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, W. J. (1972). The relative quality of economics journals: A suggested rating system. Economic Inquiry, 10(2), 156–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moosa, I. (2011). The demise of the ARC journal ranking scheme: An ex post analysis of the accounting and finance journals. Accounting & Finance, 51(3), 809–836.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mutz, R. (2022). Diversity and interdisciplinarity: Should variety, balance and disparity be combined as a product or better as a sum? An information-theoretical and statistical estimation approach. Scientometrics, 127, 7397–7414.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nederhof, A. J., & Zwaan, R. A. (1991). Quality judgments of journals as indicators of research performance in the humanities and the social and behavioral sciences. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42(5), 332–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nguyen, P., Saviotti, P. P., Trommetter, M., & Bourgeois, B. (2005). Variety and the evolution of refinery processing. Industrial and corporate change, 14(3), 469–500.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pan, Y., & Chen, C. R. (2011). Author affiliation index: A new approach to marketing journal ranking. Marketing Education Review, 21(3), 275–288.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Peters, K., Daniels, K., Hodgkinson, G. P., & Haslam, S. A. (2014). Experts’ judgments of management journal quality: An identity concerns model. Journal of Management, 40(7), 1785–1812.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pilishvili, T., Karabushchenko, N., Magomedova, E., RRoseanne, R., & Medvedeva, I. (2018). The top 50 universities for psychology: Educational and future career trends for students. Revista ESPACIOS, 39(30), 1–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rousseau, R. (2019). On the Leydesdorff-Wagner-Bornmann proposal for diversity measurement. Journal of Informetrics, 13(3), 906–907.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stirling, A. (2007). A general framework for analysing diversity in science, technology and society. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 4(15), 707–719.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu, D., Lu, X., Li, J., & Li, J. (2020). Does the institutional diversity of editorial boards increase journal quality? The case economics field. Scientometrics, 124, 1579–1597.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12005064).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SILC Business School, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 201899, China

    Yan-Hong Yang

  2. School of Statistics and Information, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Shanghai, 201620, China

    Ying-Hui Shao

Authors
  1. Yan-Hong Yang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ying-Hui Shao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ying-Hui Shao.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Table 4 The top 58 universities worldwide in the disciplines of education and educational research
Full size table
Table 5 Education journals rankings using the AAI and AAID
Full size table
Table 6 Education journals rankings using the AAIW and AAIWD, where the top 13 ranked universities were weighted 1.2 times as heavily as the remainder of all 58 top-notch institutions
Full size table
Table 7 Institutions with the greatest output of citing papers of JPCC
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Yang, YH., Shao, YH. Education journal rankings: a diversity-based Author Affiliation Index assessment methodology. Scientometrics 129, 2677–2700 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04979-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04979-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation