The Construction of Journal Quality: No Engagement Detected

Let me start by saying that while I offer this critique of ‘Problematisingthe Construction of Journal Quality: An Engagement with the Main-stream’, I consider myself no apologist for the manner in which cita-tion studies and peer-based surveys of journals have been used toconstruct ranks of journal quality. On the contrary, I share with theauthors their concerns over the manner in which narrow US-basedsurveys and citation studies are providing a particular construction ofjournal ranks, and associated claims about journal quality. The authorsare right to be concerned that existing citation studies, and US-basedperception studies, generate results that provide a particular construc-tion of journal quality and lack relevance to the rest of the accountingworld.The citation-based studies of McRae (1974) Dyckman and Zeff (1984),Smith and Krogstad (1984, 1988, 1991), Brown and Gardner (1985a,1985b), Brown et al. (1987), Bricker (1988, 1989), and Brown (1996),for example, have all been confined to studies of journals appearing onthe

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