An Analysis of Finance Journal Impact Factors

This paper provides an analysis of the citation counts of articles published in the leading finance journals. It identifies the determinants of the most prevalent measure of influence for finance journals, the Social Sciences Citation Index impact factors. It finds that impact factors are affected by citations outside the finance field, are not affected by the distribution of published articles across subfields, and are good predictors of the long-term citation counts of articles. The citation impact factors are reduced for both the Journal of Financial Economics and The Journal of Finance by their publication of other than regular articles. JOURNAL INFLUENCE IS AN IMPORTANT CONCERN in finance. Borokhovich et al. (1995) find that the influence of articles published in finance journals is significantly related to U.S. News & World Report's rankings of business schools. The rankings are based in large part on the opinions of business school Deans and CEOs of major corporations, and the ability of the school to attract the most qualified students. These results suggest that publications in influential finance journals may directly or indirectly be a significant factor in forming the perceptions of administrators, the business community, and the general public. Based on this evidence, it is not surprising that Swidler and Goldreyer (1998) find that only articles published in the most influential finance journals are reflected in the salaries of finance faculty. Obviously, the relations between influential finance publications and both business school reputation and finance faculty salaries would not be possible unless there was general agreement on which journals are influential. In finance, the most commonly used measure of journal influence is the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) impact factor. This measure is calculated by summing the number of times the articles published in a journal in years t - 1 and t - 2 are cited in year t, then dividing the sum by the total number of articles published in the journal in years t - 1 and t - 2. Schwert (1993) presents the impact factor as the single quantitative measure that demonstrates the position of the Journal of Financial Economics (JFE) as a lead