In lieu of the intellectual contributions required of faculty working at AACSB accredited business schools, deans and department heads are often conflicted by how just to evaluate and reward the quality of faculty's published work. Nevertheless, three or four faculty members publishing in top tier journals will result in an unfavorable AACSB team visit if there are, for example, 50 faculty members and half are not being published anywhere.
Therefore, is it better for a college of business to have all its faculty publishing work in regional lesser-known journals or just a handful publishing in top tier journals?
Hi Reginald - it's better for any College to have everyone contributing. Even a ground-swell of many novice or inactive authors in lower-range journals can have an impact on the credibility of that College. That said, if those authors cannot be motivated to contribute (which occurs for all sorts of reasons) - then it is a 'fall-back' to just target and offer more resources to support those that can in higher impact journals.
Hi Reginald - it's better for any College to have everyone contributing. Even a ground-swell of many novice or inactive authors in lower-range journals can have an impact on the credibility of that College. That said, if those authors cannot be motivated to contribute (which occurs for all sorts of reasons) - then it is a 'fall-back' to just target and offer more resources to support those that can in higher impact journals.
One should aim for the best journal one can get it into. If it's a top-tier one, kudos and handshakes. If it's Acta Crapta but otherwise the member is a capable teacher or educator, he/she can still be a valuable member of a well-balanced faculty. It's not all about research and publishing, but sadly administrators seems not to give the credit it deserves, to one's teaching excellence.
To my knowledge, it is included in most contracts that one should publish regularly and at a minimum rate of Xpapers/academic year or semester, but I'm yet to see a contract -in any fields of 'soft sciences'- which binds a faculty member to publish papers in at least Z ranked journals (Maybe it is bc im not working in a R1, i can imagine that they have that expectation too.) So it is unacceptable for a faculty member not publishing for years.
I'd suggest it is better that everyone contributes, but the question you raise is not an exclusive "or", it's an inclusive "or" .
You can have high achievers aiming for top tier journals AND aspiring academics publishing in lower-tier ("regional" as you put it) journals. The options do not exclude each other. It is far better that this happens for pragmatic reasons: 1) if all the high-flyers leave and go elsewhere, you have no-one left publishing; and 2) aspiring academics learn from rubbing shoulders with high-flyers in terms of publication success; 3) aspiring academic get their stripes by publishing where they can, and from this experience, they eventually publish in top-tier journals.
Exclusive "OR": "do you want tea OR coffee? (you can't really have both). Inclusive "OR": "either he's an idiot OR he's down on his luck (he could well be both).
I agree with Martin. Of course it would be wonderful to publish only in top journals, but if you publish a lot, it is impossible. Thus you may publish other valuable papers in local journals, to provide additional dissemination of your ideas and results.
Hi. It is very important to make a balance between regional and top journals. Regional are very important and good quality article are vital for young generation as well as for the journal itself.
I agree with all the previous comments. Some articles may have a more regional appeal than others. It is also important to promote and help develop non-English journals.
I also agree with Martin who wrote earlier. Those who are able to aim for higher level journals should certainly do so. Others should continue writing for lower level journals if they must for simple reasons of productivity, but they should be encouraged as well to aim for the higher tier journals, only sending the articles to lower tier ones if they have been rejected by several good journals. Submitting to top journals, even when chances of publication are low, is valuable for the reviews that the authors will receive. Top journals have top reviewers that should be providing strong critiques which will help authors early in their careers. It's true that there are some departments that emphasize quantity over quality. If this is the case in your institution, newer researchers might want to aim for professional journals which are read by non-academics. These are easier to get published in, and also play a useful role in the discipline.
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