Is there life beyond the ISI Journal lists? The international impact of Spanish, Italian, French and German economics journals

Abstract

This comparative study looks at the international impact of leading economics journals published in Spain, Italy, France and Germany. It also aims to establish whether they play similar roles in these four countries. For this purpose, data were collected on the number of times that articles published in these journals are cited in international journals on the ISI Journals lists. The study focused on the number and characteristics of the citations received during the period 1996 to 2004 by articles published between 1995 and 1999 in a limited number of Spanish, Italian, French and German journals. The international impact of the Spanish journals was found to be similar in size and characteristics to that of Italian publications. However, it differed sharply from the impact of the highest-ranking French and German journals, which received considerably more citations. Moreover, restricting the group of citing journals to the ‘blue ribbon journals’, the highest-ranking publications in the economics sector, only the leading journals in Germany and France received a significant number of references.

Acknowledgements

This study was carried out by the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science through research project: EA05-162. The authors would like to thank Sergio Afcha and Raimon Soler for their cooperation and Albrecht Ritschl, Jöerg Baten, Nikolaus Wolf and Antonio Ciccone for their suggestions.

Notes

¹ In fact, four of the total of 30 journals did not have an acronym in the ISI databases, and therefore were not included in the study in the end.

² It should be emphasized that none of the economics journals considered in the Spanish study were indexed in the ISI Master List in spite of the fact that some of them only publish original articles in English (Spanish Economic Review since 1999) and others allow the publication of articles in this language (e.g. Revista de Historia Económica, Investigaciones Económicas, Moneda y Crédito or Revista de Economía Aplicada).

³ The report can be consulted at http://ossric.cineca.it. Researchers for the present study consulted it on 10 May 2005.

⁴ As in the Spanish study, none of the publications selected were in the ISI Master List. Nonetheless, some of them published articles in English (e.g. Rivista di Storia Economica) or were published entirely in this language (BNL Quarterly Review).

⁵ In order to cover journals published in French, this study includes some publications from Belgium.

⁶ Level 1 corresponds to ‘Journals whose excellence is unanimously recognized in the field’. Level 2 to ‘Journals of very high quality with a smaller circulation’. Level 3 to ‘International reference journals in their field’.

⁷ In the case of France, the journal Revue d′Economie Politique is indexed in the ISI Master List.

⁸ The list presented for the German study has been compiled according to the suggestions of the Professors Albrecht Ritschl of Humboldt University, Jöerg Baten of Tuebingen University, Nikolaus Wolf of the Free University of Berlin and Antonio Ciccone of Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Mannheim University.

⁹ The publications selected for the German study were more highly represented in the ISI listings. Thus, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, Finanzarchiv and Zeitschrift fuer die gesamte Staatswissenschaft were indexed in the ISI Master List. Furthermore, many of the selected journals were published only in English (German Economic Review) or published most of their articles in that language.

¹⁰ Details on the compilation of these lists may be found in Conroy et al. (1995), p. 1966 ff.

¹¹ In the following paragraphs, the results obtained by the six leading Italian journals are analysed. This includes all the journals that received more than 25 citations, plus Rivista di Storia Economica, which received 24.

¹² It should be stressed that the two most highly cited German publications appeared on the ISI lists. This did not occur in the other national cases analysed.