nep-sog New Economics Papers
on Sociology of Economics
Issue of 2014‒03‒22
six papers chosen by
Jonas Holmström
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration

  1. Citations of Most Often Cited Economists: Do Scholarly Books Matter More than Quality Journals? By Jin, Jang C; Choi, E Kwan
  2. Ranking Economics and Econometrics ISI Journals by Quality Weighted Citations By Chang, C-L.; McAleer, M.J.
  3. Quality Weighted Citations Versus Total Citations in the Sciences and Social Sciences By Chang, C-L.; McAleer, M.J.
  4. Open Access Journals & Academics’ Behaviour By Matteo Migheli; Giovanni B. Ramello
  5. Within and across department variability in individual productivity : the case of economics By Javier Ruiz-Castillo Ucelay; Antonio Perianes-Rodríguez
  6. Author gender affects the rating of academic articles: Evidence from an incentivized, deception-free laboratory experiment. By Michał Krawczyk; Magdalena Smyk

  1. By: Jin, Jang C; Choi, E Kwan
    Abstract: This paper empirically investigates the determinants of citations based on the publicationof the top 100 most often cited economists. The effects of publication age and author fame onsubsequent citations are found to be positive and significant. Citations are also significantly affectedby popular subfields in economics. However, journal quality measures, such as impact factors,download statistics and top-4 elite journals, have insignificant effects on citations. In contrast, thecitation effect of scholarly books is positive and significant, and its impact is even greater than thoseof journal quality measures.
    Keywords: citations; most often cited economists
    JEL: A1
    Date: 2014–03–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:37372&r=sog
  2. By: Chang, C-L.; McAleer, M.J.
    Abstract: __Abstract__ The paper analyses academic journal quality and impact using quality weighted citations that are based on the widely-used Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (ISI). A recently developed Index of Citations Quality (ICQ), based on quality weighted citations, is used to analyse the top 276 Economics and top 10 Econometrics journals in the ISI Economics category using alternative quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs). It is shown that ICQ is a useful additional measure to the 2-Year Impact Factor (2YIF) and other well known RAMs available in ISI for the purpose of evaluating journal impact and quality, as well as ranking, of Economics and Econometrics journals as it contains information that has very low correlations with the information contained in alternative well-known RAMs. Among other findings, the top Econometrics journals have some of the highest ICQ scores in the ISI category of Economics.
    Keywords: research assessment measures, impact factors, Eigenfactor, article influence, quality weighted citations, index of citations quality, economics journal rankings
    JEL: C10 C81 Y10
    Date: 2014–02–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ems:eureir:50643&r=sog
  3. By: Chang, C-L.; McAleer, M.J.
    Abstract: __Abstract__ The paper analyses academic journal quality and research impact using quality weighted citations versus total citations, based on the widely-used Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (ISI). A new Index of Citations Quality (ICQ) is presented, based on quality weighted citations. The new index is used to analyse the leading 500 journals in both the Sciences and Social Sciences using quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs) that are based on alternative transformations of citations. It is shown that ICQ is a useful additional measure to 2YIF and other well known RAMs for the purpose of evaluating the impact and quality, as well as ranking, of journals as it contains information that has very low correlations with the information contained in the well known RAMs for both the Sciences and Social Sciences.
    Keywords: research assessment measures, impact factors, Eigenfactor, article influence, quality weighted citations, total conditions, index of citations quality, journal rankings
    JEL: C1 C81 Y10
    Date: 2014–02–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ems:eureir:50641&r=sog
  4. By: Matteo Migheli; Giovanni B. Ramello
    Abstract: The rising star of scholarly publishing is Open Access. Even some traditional journals now offer this option on author payment, and many full freely accessible journals are now available to scholars, providing relief to research institutions increasingly unable to afford the escalating subscription rates of serials. However, proper recognition of full Open Access journals by the community remains a major obstacle to overcome if they are to become a viable alternative for scholarly communication. Through a survey, this work investigates economics scholars’ attitudes to OA, and attempts to outline the state of practices and norms governing individuals’ publication choices.
    Keywords: Open Access, Scholarly Communication. Research, Journals
    JEL: L17 L86 O33 Z13
    Date: 2014–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:icr:wpicer:03-2014&r=sog
  5. By: Javier Ruiz-Castillo Ucelay; Antonio Perianes-Rodríguez
    Abstract: University departments (or research institutes) are the governance units in any scientific field where the demand for and the supply of researchers interact. As a first step towards a formal model of this process, this paper investigates the characteristics of productivity distributions of a population of 2,530 individuals with at least one publication who were working in 81 top Economics departments in 2007. Individual productivity is measured in two ways: as the number of publications until 2007, and as a quality index that weights differently the articles published in four journal equivalent classes. The academic age of individuals since obtaining the PhD until 2007 is used to measure productivity per year. Independently of the two productivity measures, and both before and after age normalization, the main findings of the paper are the following three. Firstly, individuals within each department have very different productivities. Secondly, there is not a single pattern of productivity inequality and skewness at the department level. On the contrary, productivity distributions are very different across departments. However, the effect on overall productivity inequality of differences in productivity distributions across departments is accounted for to a large extent by scale factors well captured by departments’ mean productivities. Thirdly, this high degree of departmental heterogeneity is found to be compatible with considerably greater homogeneity across the members of a partition of the sample into seven countries and a residual category.
    Date: 2014–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:werepe:we1404&r=sog
  6. By: Michał Krawczyk (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw); Magdalena Smyk (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw)
    Abstract: In this study we sought to verify the hypothesis that a researcher’s gender affects evaluation of his or her work, especially in fields in which women are a small minority. To this end we asked a sample of economics majors to rate papers written by mixed-gender couples, indicating that they were (co-) authored by a “female economist”, “male economist”, “young female economist” or “young male economist”. While the age factor played no role, female authors received lower ratings. This effect was independent of the subject's gender.
    Keywords: women in science, laboratory experiment, gender bias
    JEL: C91 J16
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2014-07&r=sog

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