Three Failed Attempts of Joint Rankings of Research in Economics and Business

Abstract

The attempts by Schulze, Warning, and Wiermann (2008) and Ritzberger (2008) to develop a joint ranking list of journals for economics and business research are critically evaluated. The results show a lack of sufficient knowledge of the quality of business journals. Based on these obscure journal rankings, Fabel, Hein, and Hofmeister (2008) derive a ranking of universities and departments. While Diamantopoulos and Wagner (2008) already show a lack of face-validity of these results, this article explains that the reason for this lies not only in the obscure weighting of the journals but, even more importantly, in a remarkable incompleteness of the data base.Journal ranking, university ranking