Symbolic capital and the basket of 8: What changed after the creation of the basket?

Inconsistent quality signals: evidence from the regional journals

“…However, this mechanism is prone to biases, as there are information asymmetries between journals and various interest groups. Three interest groups are in the spotlight: a researcher, who makes a choice of publication source for his/her paper; an institution or policymakers, who oversee research evaluation procedures (funding, hiring, assigning scientific degrees) (Chipidza & Tripp, 2021 ); readers who are limited in their abilities to consume all possible relevant publications and look for the most prominent ones (Bikard, 2018 ; Bikard & Marx, 2020 ). These groups possess various information, and that potentially creates asymmetries in decision-making processes.…”

“…Reviewers and editors have an imperfect ability to capture papers that may increase journal prestige (Sugimoto et al, 2013 ) and quality (McCabe & Snyder, 2005 ). Readers and researchers sometimes make a choice due to the high rank of a journal, rather than the actual quality or relevance of the paper (Baum, 2012 ; Chipidza & Tripp, 2021 ; Osterloh & Frey, 2020 ).…”

“…The IF is a widespread evaluation of quality (Baum, 2012 ), even journal websites have built-in dashboards of bibliometric measures, so that most visitors can notice this information without additional costs. Journal websites also publish other quality signals of high visibility: editorial teams’ composition (Endenich & Trapp, 2018 ), journal rankings like ABS list (Baum, 2012 ; Chipidza & Tripp, 2021 ; Osterloh & Frey, 2020 ), article acceptance rates. Characteristics of authors who publish their work in journals are, however, rarely present on journal websites.…”

“…These are, however, more unusual approaches to the definition of a quality signal. Most sources build their understanding of journal quality signals on common and publicly available bibliometric measures, including journal impact factor (IF), quartiles, and the presence in specific journal lists (Chavarro et al, 2018 ; Chipidza & Tripp, 2021 ; Kuskova et al, 2011 ; Osterloh & Frey, 2020 ). These bibliometric data-based approaches, in general, fit the requirements of objectivity and consistency of journal quality assessment.…”