Voting with Their Feet: In Which Journals Do the Most Prolific Finance Researchers Publish?

Abstract

The financial economics literature has experienced rapid growth over the past 40 years, triggering a dramatic increase in the number of journals. We employ a new method to analyze the current pecking order of finance journals. Specifically, we analyze the publication records of prolific authors to provide evidence regarding the perceived quality of a set of 23 high‐impact finance journals. Assuming these scholars target the “best” research outlets, their publication records can reveal information about their subjective rankings of the next‐best alternatives to the traditional elite finance journals. The results suggest that prolific authors are most likely to target outlets that have raised their profile in recent years (e.g., Financial Management and Financial Analysts Journal) and new specialized finance journals (e.g., Journal of Financial Markets, Journal of Corporate Finance, and Journal of Financial Intermediation) when publishing outside the set of elite journals.

Ranking of finance journals: a stochastic dominance analysis

“…For instance, if an article appeared in 1991 and it had 200 citations, then the normalized citation of the article would be 10 (200 citations/20 years old). Table I Chan et al (2013) and Danielson and Heck (2014), which suggest that JF, JFE, and RFS are at the top of most financial journal rank lists and dominate the finance field in terms of citations. The lowest citation score in Table I is for the Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting (RQFA) (18).…”

Where should I publish to get promoted? A finance journal ranking based on business school promotions

“…The main difference between AAI and ACI is the base for the ranking: while AAI considers the university rank, the ACI is based on a rank of scholars, regardless of their affiliation with a top business school. Danielson and Heck (2014) examine the publications of prolific authors and present evidence that prolific finance authors route their research towards four top-tier journals (JF, JFE, RFS, and JFQA). Crook and Walrup (2016) reach a similar conclusion and argue that (excluding the top journals) niche finance outlets rank higher than generalist journals.…”

“…Citations 50 1987-1991 Beattie and Goodacre (2006) Other 408 1996-2000 Borde, Cheney, and Madura (1999) Survey 55 NA Borokhovich, Lee, and Simkins (2011) Citations 12 2008-2009Brown (2003 Other 18 2001 Chan, Chang, and Chang (2013) Top Scholars 23 1990-2010 Chen and Huang (2007) Top Scholars 41 NA Coe and Weinstock (1983) Survey 20 NA Crook and Walrup (2016) Top Scholars 20 1985-2014 Currie and Pandher (2011) Survey 83 NA Currie and Pandher (2020) Survey 102 NA Danielson and Heck (2014) Top Scholars 23 1970-2009 Danielson and Heck (2016) Top Scholars 23 1970-2014 Kao, Hsu, Lu, and Fung (2016) Citations 23 1990-2010 Mabry and Sharplin (1985) Citations 30 1980-1985Millet-Reyes (2013 Citations 31 -2008Netter, Poulsen, and Kieser (2018 Other NA NA Oltheten, Theoharakis, and Travlos (2005) Survey 40 NA [-4, +1] time window surrounding a promotion (both from assistant professor to associate professor, and from associate professor to full professor), standardized by the total number of articles published by the journal, broken up by periods of equal length (2008 to 2016, 1998 to 2007, and 1990 to 1997). Australia/Oceania-South America).…”

Topics and methods in economics, finance, and business journals: A content analysis enquiry

“…Given the small odds of publishing in top journals in any field, Danielson and Heck (2014) suggest gaining a better understanding of the “next-best” journals so that both novice and established authors may make more informed decisions about where to submit their academic manuscripts. Through these and other findings (Borokhovich et al., 1995, 1998, 2000), researchers may become aware of prevailing and emerging topics in the literature and align their research agenda accordingly.…”

“…Regarding trend topics in the literature, Danielson and Heck (2014) showed that authors in the highest productivity percentile were most likely to publish their latest articles in journals that had recently raised their impact factors. In the case of finance and business finance, they found that top academics were publishing in relatively new journals, such as Financial Management and the Financial Analysts Journal , and in new specialized publications such as the Journal of Financial Markets , the Journal of Corporate Finance , and the Journal of Financial Intermediation .…”