Who is the ‘Journal Grand Master’? A new ranking based on the Elo rating system

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper we transfer the Elo rating system, which is widely accepted in chess, sports and other disciplines, to rank scientific journals. The advantage of the Elo system is the explicit consideration of the factor time and the history of a journal's ranking performance. Most other rankings that are commonly applied neglect this fact. The Elo ranking methodology can easily be applied to any metric, published on a regular basis, to rank journals. We illustrate the approach using the SNIP indicator based on citation data from Scopus. Our data set consists of more than 20 000 journals from many scientific fields for the period from 1999 to 2015. We show that the Elo approach produces similar but by no means identical rankings compared to other rankings based on the SNIP alone or the Tournament Method. Especially the rank order for rather 'middle-class' journals can tremendously change.

Machine learning in information systems - a bibliographic review and open research issues

“…Thus, the selection process of the articles implicitly assumes quality assurance within the selected journals. Notably, this assumption is not undisputed according to Lehmann and Wohlrabe (2017) or Seiler and Wohlrabe (2014).…”

Localization Economies and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Football Teams in Sao Paulo, Brazil

“…where K is an attenuation factor, or else, a weight factor. The K factor represents how fast the rating can evolve (Lehmann and Wohlrabe, 2017). The U.S.…”

“…In other words, if a team wins it gets three points, however if there was a draw, leading to penalty kicks, we consider the result a draw.We define long-term success using a novel Elo rating of CP football teams. Elo ratings are commonly used to rank teams in sports(Gásquez and Royuela, 2016;Lehmann and Wohlrabe, 2017). The Elo rating system is a relative skill ranking based on game-by-game outcomes.…”

TimeRank: A dynamic approach to rate scholars using citations

“…Recent work applies the Elo method to the ranking of journals [Lehmann and Wohlrabe, 2017], and compare with established solutions such as the Source Normalized Impact per Publication (SNIP). The authors simulate a yearly roundrobin 'competition' between each pair of different journals and consider the outcome of a match between journals a win for whoever has the higher SNIP score at that year, or a tie if the two journals have equal SNIP score.…”