An Analysis of Publications in Leading Tourism Journals and Its Implications on China Tourism Research

Abstract

Publications in leading research journals are generally considered as important to individuals and institutions as high quality research is advantageous for grant applications and reputation enhancement (Law & Chon, 2007). This article reports on an historical analysis of published articles in three leading tourism research journals, including Annals of Tourism Research [ATR], Journal of Travel Research [JTR], and Tourism Management [TM]. Excluding book reviews, research notes, editors' comments, readers' comments, and reports, these journals published a total of 2613 full‐length research articles in the period 1986 to 2006. During the analysis, the study used both absolute (AB) and relative (RE) counting methods. Publications written by scholars from Mainland China, forecasted to be the world's top travel destination in 2020, are very low. The article thus offers implications to the development of China's tourism research.

在主要期刊发表文章不论对作者还是学术机构都很重要，因为优秀的研究有助于申请研究资助和提高学术声誉 (Law & Chon, 2007)。本文分析了三本主要的旅游研究期刊过往所发表的文章，包括 Annals of Tourism Research [ATR], Journal of Travel Research [JTR], 和 Tourism Management [TM]。除了书评、研究摘要、编辑评论、读者意见和研究简报外，这三本期刊在 1986 年至 2006 年其间，共刊登了 2,613 篇论文。本文在分析过程中采用了绝对测量和相对测量方法。虽然有预测指中国在 2020 会成为全球最佳旅游目的地，但内地学者发表的论文却凤毛麟角。因此，本文的目的是研究这现象对中国旅游研究发展的启示。

Keywords:

• Tourism journals
• publication analysis
• research
• China
• 旅游期刊
• 论文分析
• 研究
• 中国

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for offering constructive comments about the earlier versions of this paper.