Dear Will, and everyone feeling shortchanged by A-lists Journals,
You might want to explore career opportunities in the Nordic countries
(Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway). There, appointments and promotions are
based on external evaluator reports, where evaluators are expected to
actually read the candidates submitted 'best 10' publications. While there
is a tendency to increasingly consider the status of the journal, this is
only one of the considerations. The drawback is that it is a lot of work to
write such a report if there are, say, 10 applicants for a chair (I recently
had to do one for Helsinki School of Economics...).
This also provides opportunities to test Will's hypotheses, firstly by
exploiting national differences as proxies for different regimes, and
secondly by exploiting variations in practice among institutions - some
institutions in the Nordic countries (notably Norway) recently adopted
journal lists, though they are typically much longer than those in use in
US/UK institutions. A challenge for testing H2 and H3 would however be to
objectively identify and operationalize 'trivial research questions' and
'research that explores boundaries of the field'.
BTW, the concerns regarding journal lists and their implications for
research actually conducted also exists in Asia, notably Hong Kong and
Singapore - see
www.springerlink.com/content/w5517806518v5225/?p=4e726f5cc5dc45e287c7dd9969c
2dd33&pi=0
Klaus Meyer
University Bath, UK & Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
www.klausmeyer.co.uk
School of Management, University of Bath
Bath BA2 7AY, U.K.
Phone: +44 (0)1225 383695
-----Original Message-----
From: International Management Division Discussion
[mailto:
IMD-L@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Will Mitchell
Sent: 22 April 2008 23:21
To:
IMD-L@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
Subject: Re: 7/50 Target Journal Validity
In my view, creating "A" lists is pathological. When schools read vitas
rather than papers, they have no sense of research quality of their faculty
members.
This has several extremely negative consequences: (1) little shared
understanding of the research of faculty member within a school, (2) Type 1
promotion errors that reward people who have published incremental research
in so-called "A" journals, (3) Type 2 promotion errors that penalise people
who have published strong exploratory research or important field research
that does not fit the "A" list .
I am not aware of studies, but I would love to see studies that tested the
following hypotheses:
H1. "The more a school relies on journal lists to manage its promotion
decisions, the less cohesive its faculty will be" (yes, I realise that the
direction of causality can work both ways in this prediction)
H2. "The more a school relies on journal lists to manage its promotion
decisions, the more trivial research its faculty members will publish"
H3. "The more a school relies on journal lists to manage its promotion
decisions, the more likely it will lose faculty members who publish research
that explores the boundaries of their fields"
Any guesses about whether a paper that tested these hypotheses, even
robustly, would find a home in an "A" journal?
The bottom line for me is that there is no substitute for actually reading
papers, indeed reading a body of work to understand its aggregate
contribution.
will
Quoting Daniel Martin <
dmartin@ALINEAGROUP.COM>:
> IMD Colleagues,
>
> Many business schools facing accreditation have moved towards a
> specified list of target journals for their faculty to publish in to
> maintain their AQ status. As our school goes through the process (with 7
"A" and 50 "B"
> journals, I have wondered what kind of quantitative evidence supports
> the practice. From a HR performance management perspective (and as the
> results of the publications impact tenure/retention, etc.) you would
> anticipate a validity study of the practice. Many schools have had the
> practice in effect for years, but I have not found any studies in the
> literature. If you have any related studies, I would appreciate you
> passing them on to me, providing the citations or a synopsis of your
unpublished results.
>
> Thank you in advance,
>
> Dan
>
> Daniel E. Martin, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Management
> California State University, East Bay
> (510) 885-2060
>
>
>
> Vice President
> Alinea Group
> SF, CA-Washington, DC
> (800) 590-8095
>
--
J. Rex Fuqua Professor of International Management Duke University, Durham,
NC 27708-0120
Fax: 919.681.6244, Email:
Will.Mitchell@duke.edu Home site:
www.willmitchell.org