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Journal of Management Inquiry
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Are Articles in "Top" Management Journals Necessarily of Higher Quality?

Gangaram Singh

San Diego State University

Kamal M. Haddad

San Diego State University

Chee W. Chow

San Diego State University

This study investigates the appropriateness of using publication of an article in a top (specifically, top five) management journal as a proxy for its quality. Social Science Citation Index citation counts were collected over 7-year event windows for articles published in 34 management journals in 1993 and 1996. Overall, the authors found that articles published in the five journals most often considered to be the top ones in management tend to be cited more often than ones published in the other journals. Far more important, however, across three different criteria for placing articles into top versus non-top categories, there were substantial classification errors from using journal ranking as a proxy for quality. This finding suggests that both administrators and the management discipline will be well served by efforts to evaluate each article on its own merits rather than abdicate this responsibility by using journal ranking as a proxy for quality.

Key Words: journal rankings • faculty performance evaluation • citations • advancing knowledge

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Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 16, No. 4, 319-331 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1056492607305894
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This Article
Right arrow Abstract Freely available
Right arrow Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
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Right arrow Email this article to a friend
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Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Web of Science (3)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
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Right arrow Articles by Singh, G.
Right arrow Articles by Chow, C. W.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?