Editorial: How to navigate in the ocean of indexers, metrics, and rankings in the management field

Abstract

Following in good journals' footsteps, our editorials have been trying to give our readers relevant information on the complex world of publishing in the management field. One particular aspect to be considered by the authors is the journals' quality assessments, represented by several indexers, metrics and rankings, which work as parameters for researchers identifying the best (and most proper) outlets for publishing their research.As both institutions and researchers are regularly evaluated by their academic impact that depends on those parameters (De Rond and Miller, 2005;Aguinis et al., 2014Aguinis et al., , 2020, the choice of the right outlet becomes critical (Aguinis et al., 2020). Therefore, before submitting a research paper, it is necessary to identify the proper outlet if the authors want to maximise their chances. Some constraining factors should be considered, such as the adherence to the journal's editorial line (Linton, 2012;Sun and Linton, 2014) and language barriers (Cargill and Burgess, 2017), among others unrelated to the article's technical aspects. In addition, identifying target journals is commonly done by analysing academic metrics, and here lies a problem for some (especially young) researchersunderstanding the different indexes, comparing them and choosing the journal that fits each researcher's needs.Considering this situation, this editorial aims to summarise the best-known academic metrics, including indexers and impact factors regarding journals in the management field. We hope this information helps our readers to better navigate in such a complex environment and, consequently, to get better results in their careers.This paper is structured as follows: First, we describe the key databases and metrics of two leading scientific content publishing organisations, Elsevier and Clarivate. Second, we discuss some of the world's most prestigious lists and quality guides for scientific journals, such as the Chartered Association of Business Schools' (CABS) Academic Journal Guide (AJG) and the Financial Times List. Lastly, we present the Google scientific metrics, which are more comprehensive and keep growing in relevance. In the end, we offer our final comments. Elsevier related1.1 Scopus Launched in 2004, Scopus is Elsevier's scientific publication database. Scopus includes over 34,346 peer-reviewed journals in the top-tier topic disciplines of biological sciences, social sciences, physical sciences and health sciences out of almost 36,377 titles (22,794 active and 13,583 inactive titles) from nearly 11,678 publishers (Elsevier, 2023a(Elsevier, , 2023b. Three sources are covered: book series, scientific journals and trade journals. Four different numerical