You Cannot Judge a Book by Its Cover: The Problems with Journal Rankings

Abstract

Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Sangster, Alan (2015) You cannot judge a book by its cover: the problems with journal rankings. Accounting Education, 24 (3). pp. [175][176][177][178][179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186] This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/61858/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version. Copyright and reuse:Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University.Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available.Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. 1 You cannot judge a book by its cover: the problems with journal rankingsAlan Sangster (a.j.a.sangster@btinternet.com) Griffith University, Australia AbstractJournal rankings lists have impacted and are impacting accounting educators and accounting education researchers around the world. Nowhere is the impact positive. It ranges from slight constraints on academic freedom to admonition, censure, reduced research allowances, non-promotion, non-short-listing for jobs, increased teaching loads, and redesignation as a non-researcher, all because the chosen research specialism of someone who was vocationally motivated to become a teacher of accounting is, ironically, accounting education. University managers believe that these journal ranking lists show that accounting faculty publish top quality research on accounting regulation, financial markets, business finance, auditing, international accounting, management accounting, taxation, accounting in society, and more, but not on what they do in their 'day job' -teaching accounting. These same managers also believe that the journal ranking lists indicate that accounting faculty do not publish top quality research in accounting history and accounting systems. And they also believe that journal ranking lists show that accounting faculty write top quality research in education, history, and systems, but only if they publish it in specialist journals that do not have the word 'accounting' in their title, or in mainstream journals that do. Tarring everyone with the same brush because of the journal in which they publish is inequitable. We would not allow it in other ...

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“…While publication pressure may be only one of many pressures facing academics in the current environment it nevertheless causes immense pressure since academics who do not perform well may be 'performance managed' out by university managers (Sangster, 2015). This was tragically illustrated by the suicide of a high profile UK academic after he was placed on performance review following a number of failed grant applications (Parr, 2014).…”

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“…Unfortunately, specialist journals rarely appear in comprehensive and general journal rankings, which include outlets from a variety of domains. When included, they are dramatically disadvantaged and do not fare well (Sangster, 2015). For example, accounting history and accounting education domains are (unfairly) poorly ranked in the Chartered Association of Business Schools' (ABS) Academic Journal Guide of the UK (Sangster, 2011).…”

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“…Our concern is with the level of paradigmatic plurality featured in the dialogues CABS desired. If they are to truly represent our subject, then those evaluating our work have to possess first rate research credentials and they have to be receptive to the multiple perspectives being pursued within our respective thought communities (Sangster, 2015). Even so, they cannot be expected to comprehend the intellectual weight of the entire discipline within a short time-frame.…”

“…To state the obvious, lists provide a small number of gatekeepers with a disproportionate amount of power over the shape of our discipline (Hussain, 2013;Sangster, 2015), channelling it in directions that are consistent with topics, theories, concepts, and methodologies most desirable in terms of current areas of interest and citations. Pushing up citation scores influences the impact factor of a journal.…”

“…They have had a presence on the scene for a while now, influencing where people send their work, what types of contributions they write, and how they value outlets and the people who write for them (Sangster, 2015). The lists are notoriously contingent unless, that is, your preferred publication conduit of choice is one of the standard four or five that routinely perch on high.…”