Risk Management and Insurance‐Related Journals: A Survey of Risk and Insurance Academics

Abstract

This research provides an assessment of the utility and quality of risk management and insurance (RMI)-related journals using professorial expert opinion. Although Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)-produced citation counts and article impact factors are widely available and commonly used methods of journal comparison, they are limited to very few generally premier journals in any field, including RMI, leaving stakeholders with substantial gaps when benchmarking journal factors. We bridge this gap by comparing RMI faculty opinion of quality to SSCI assessments for 13 journals with results indicating general consistency across these measures. The expert opinion approach is extended to assess quality across a sample of 30 RMI-related publications, along with assigning journal categories delineated based on reported academic utility, contributing to RMI boundary definitions. Posthoc analysis indicates only modest influences for some individual, institutional, and journal-related factors on professorial perceptions, evidence that expert opinions are reliable measures of RMI journal utility and quality. Additionally, only modest differences are found in journal quality assessments by academics relative to the teaching versus research institutional mission of their employers, as well as across perceived individual teaching versus research role expectations. Thus, the expert opinion approach to evaluating utility and quality, coupled with regression and subsample analysis, aids RMI academics and other stakeholders in journal assessment and boundary definition issues. These contributions to the advancement of journal assessment methodologies in general may also prove useful across academic disciplines.

International Business Research: Coauthorship Patterns and Quality

“…That is, more citations imply better quality. The use of SSCI to measure research quality has been widely used in the literature (e.g., Ferguson, Dorfman, & Ferguson, 2005;Krogstad & Smith, 2003;Smith, 2004;Zou, 2005). Essentially, the influence of a research work is revealed when other authors refer their new research to this research work.…”

The Journal of Risk and Insurance: Authors of Influence

“…These authors find that, "in order of impact, JRI, Econometrica and Journal of Political Economy are considered to be the academic journals that generate influential works driving risk management and insurance research" (p. 127). 7 Ferguson et al (2005) use an expert opinion (i.e., survey) approach to identify RMI journal quality. The authors discuss potential issues related to assessing journal quality and difficulties using citation counts such as SSCI (see p. 71-72).…”

“…Ferguson et al. () use an expert opinion (i.e., survey) approach to identify RMI journal quality. The authors discuss potential issues related to assessing journal quality and difficulties using citation counts such as SSCI (see p. 71–72).…”

A Citation Analysis of Risk, Insurance, and Actuarial Research: 2001 Through 2005

“…Finally, libraries and other institutions needing to make decisions about which journals to purchase in a particular discipline, given limited resources, also benefit from an understanding of relative journal quality. Ferguson, Dorfman, and Ferguson (2005) provide greater detail and discussion of issues such as these, as well as other theoretical and practical problems in determining scholarly journal quality.…”

“…Hollman and Zietz (1998) analyze citations appearing in the Journal of Insurance Issues (JII) . Ferguson, Dorfman, and Ferguson (2005) survey risk and insurance academics to assess journal quality categorized by perceived utility and examined individual, institutional, and journal‐related factors influencing expert opinion of journal quality.…”