RANKING DISCIPLINARY JOURNALS WITH THE GOOGLE SCHOLAR H-INDEX: A NEW TOOL FOR CONSTRUCTING CASES FOR TENURE, PROMOTION, AND OTHER PROFESSIONAL DECISIONS

Abstract

Given the importance of journal rankings to tenure, promotion, and other professionaldecisions, this study examines a new method for ranking social workjournals. The Google Scholar h-index correlated highly with the current goldstandard for measuring journal quality, Thomson Institute for Scientific Information(ISI) impact factors, but provided data for more than 4 times as manydisciplinary journals. Eighty disciplinary periodicals are identified and rankedusing the Google Scholar h-index. The vast majority of these were ranked higherthan the lowest ranked social work journal indexed by Thomson ISI.Although the results hold salience for many professional stakeholders, theymay be of particular interest to faculty who publish in disciplinary journals notindexed by Thomson ISI. The Google Scholar h-index provides faculty with anadditional tool to document the quality of the venues in which they publish.