JASIS and library and information science journal rankings: A review and analysis of the last half-century
✍ Scribed by Nisonger, Thomas E.
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 101 KB
- Volume
- 50
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0002-8231
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The concept of journal ranking is explained along with the theoretical and practical significance of ranking journals. An eight-variable model for classifying journalranking studies is outlined. A review of LIS journal rankings of the last half-century identifies 178 published between 1952 and 1997. The majority of these used some type of citation measure, followed by rankings based on production, subjective judgment, and reading, respectively. Analysis of JASIS's, and its immediate predecessor, American Documentation's, position in these rankings, found that they were logically excluded from 18. In the remaining 160, they ranked first in 20 and in the top five in 88. It is noted that JASIS also appears on many lists of "core" LIS journals, and that it has been the object of investigation in numerous studies.
This article analyzes library and information science journal rankings published during the last half-century and the Journal of the American Society for Information Science's (JASIS) position in those rankings. Also included is American Documentation, the original title used for JASIS's first 20 volumes, when the American Documentation Institute published it. The Journal of Documentary Reproduction, published quarterly by the American Library Association from 1938 to 1943 and usually identified (Shera, 1976;Houser, 1988) as a forerunner of American Documentation, is not included in this review because of the 7-year gap between its cessation and the launching of American Documentation in 1950, which is generally considered JASIS's founding date (Bobinski, 1985;Bowman, 1985). Also, there is no evidence that LIS journal rankings data date as far back as the late 1930s-early 1940s.
This review includes published journal ranking in information science, library science, and library and information science, as well as subareas of these disciplines. Unpublished journal rankings, such as those contained in doctoral dissertations or master's theses, are beyond this investigation's scope-although several of the included studies are articles based on their author's dissertation.
These methods were used to identify LIS journal rankings: searching the Library and Information Science Abstracts, Library Literature, and ERIC databases; bibliographies, such as Sellen (1993) and Nisonger (1992); serendipity; and the author's personal knowledge based on his previous research. However, no claim to comprehensiveness is made.
It must be acknowledged that journal ranking is controversial. The validity and genuine meaning of various citation measures has been extensively discussed in the literature; for a recent example, see Harter and Nisonger (1997). McGrath (1987) argued that subjective journal rankings do not validly indicate a hierarchical status between two adjacent ranking journals unless the difference in their ratings are statistically significant, and that such studies often can