Academic Journal Rankings

Zum Thema Ranking von wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften hat kürzlich (12.06.2009) Prof. Will Hughes folgendes geschrieben:

“It is interesting how many times people try to provide a ranked list of journals, and it is important to be clear about the reasons for wanting to do this.  On the one hand, you might be wanting to shape your publication strategy and be clear about which journals you are targeting and why.  On the other hand, you might be trying to provide administrative staff with the means to make your quality judgments on your behalf, which is always a dangerous strategy.  I am in favour of peer review, because that  retains the judgments in the hands of academics.  Whatever your reason for wanting to create a ranked list of journals, I can offer you two recent insights into how our peers view the top journals in our field.  One from Australia, one from the UK.  In Australia, a group called the Australian Business Deans Council ascertained which were the top journals in their field, as they saw it, rated A-D.  As this was much wider than the built environment, it is interesting to see that there are built environment journals in that list.  In the Interdisciplinary list, Construction Management and Economics is rated in the top category of journals, as A*, along with Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.  Automation in Construction is listed as A, as is Engineering Construction and Architectural Management.  Construction Law Journal gets a B, does International Journal of Construction Information

Technology. Construction Information Quarterly rates a C.  You may examine this list here: http://www.abdc.edu.au/download.php?id=120836,177,1-  

• Construction Management and Economics           A*-
• Journal of Construction Engineering and Management          A*-
• Automation in Construction          A- 
• Engineering Construction and Architectural Management          A- 
• Construction Law Journal           B- 
• International Journal of Construction Information Technology          B- 
• Construction Information Quarterly          C

In the UK, we recently completed a Research Assessment Exercise. The purpose was to determine the quality of research at UK University Departments, in order to figure out how to distribute some of the research funding from central government. The single most important criteria for evaluation was “outputs” and generally this equates to journal papers, although other forms of output are often submitted, such as books, exhibitions and so on. Each academic submits his or her best four publications for review, and the information is now in the public domain at: http://submissions.rae.ac.uk/results/. On examining the journal papers submitted to the RAE, I was interested to see how many were published in each journal, for the purposes of ascertaining where UK academics place their most important research papers.  The vast majority of journal titles that appear in the list appear only once.  Below, I list those journals that contained more than ten papers submitted to the Architecture and Built Environment Panel:  Journal (Number of papers submitted)

• Construction Management and Economics (93)
• Building Research & Information (55)
• Building and Environment (47)
• Building Service Engineering Research & Technology (43)
• Structural Survey (34)Automation in Construction (34)
• Energy and Buildings (30)
• Facilities (29)
• Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management (23)
• Solar Energy (20)
• Engineering Construction and Architectural Management (18)
• Design Studies (17)
• Applied Thermal Engineering (17)
• Architectural Engineering and Design Management (16)
• Lighting Research and Technology (15)
• Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction (14)
• International Journal of Project Management (14)
• Urban Studies (12)
• Landscape and Urban Planning (12)
• Journal of Construction Procurement (12)
• Journal of Construction Engineering and Management (12)
• Journal of Architecture (11)
• Architectural Research Quarterly (11)
• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (10)
• Property Management (10)
• Journal of Sound and Vibration (10)

What can you take from this list?  I like this list because it is drawn from a huge sample of what UK academics see as their strongest outputs, and they selected the outputs themselves.  So it forms a useful view of what UK academics think of the journals in our field. Of course, it is important to know how our field constituted in terms of subjects in the UK.  The disciplinary domains were categorized in the review process, as follows:

• Architecture, Landscape, Theory and History - 35%
• Construction Management, Property, Surveying & FM - 30%
• Building Science, Environment & Engineering - 35%

This is important as it forms part (though not all) of the context for the numbers quoted above.  Presumably, if we sliced the list of outputs into these three categories, we may get a slightly different rank ordering of the journals.  Also, it might be useful to figure out how the list looks if we only look at the highest scoring Departments.  All this can be done, but it takes time. All in all, a difficult question, especially if the aim is to displace professional judgments about the quality of individual outputs.”

Quelle: Will Hughes, Professor of Construction Management and Economics, Head School of Construction Management and Engineering, University of Reading

Will ist Editor-in-Chief von Construction Management and Economics und beobachtet das Thema Journal Ranking deshalb sehr aufmerksam. Ich stehe der einseitigen Ausrichtung akademischer Leistungsbeurteilung, insbesondere im englischsprachigen akademischem Umfeld, sehr kritisch gegenüber. Die Leistung und zunehmend das Gehalt von Uni-Angehörigen hängt in vielen Hochschulen von der Publizierhäufigkeit in gerankten bzw. indizierten Fachzeitschriften ab. Da ich selbst bei 3 internationalen Zeitschriften im Bereich Baumanagement im Editorial Review Board bin, weiß ich, daß die Zeitschriften nur bestimme Formate und Qulitäten zulassen. Allerdings müssen Leistungen beurteilt und hinterfragt werden, so daß Kriterien erstellt werden müssen. Das Ranken von Zeitschriften ist ein naheliegender und legitimerAnsatz hierbei. Zum Thema ‘Journal Impact Factor’ (IF), als eine Variante des Rankings, findet man bei Elsevier folgende Definition:What is an impact factor? 

• The journal impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. The impact factor helps you evaluate a journal’s relative importance, especially when you compare it to others in the same field. The impact factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the current year to articles published in the two previous years by the total number of articles published in the two previous years.

Bei Bau-Fachzeitschriften liegt der Wert wohl kaum über 1 - wenn er überhaupt berechnet ist (Bsp.: Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering (ASCE)  0,69 IF; Automation in Construction 0,36 IF). Dies hängt natürlich damit zusammen, daß Baumanagement kein Bereich mit so großen Forscherzahlen ist, wie beispielsweise Medizin.

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