Ranking of Journals in Library and Information Science: A Comparison of Perceptual and Citation-based Measures," College & Research Libraries 52

A citation analysis of core library and information science journals was conducted to identify factors associated with subjective rankings of a journal's value in promotion and tenure deci-sions. Prestige rankings from a 1982 survey of ARL directors and library school deans were correlated with nine citation measures: total citation count, impact factor, immediacy index, references per paper, Price's Index, self-citation rate, popularity factor, citation factor, and con-sumption factor, with and without controlling for journal orientation, age, circulation, and index coverage. Results indicate that deans and directors may differ in their weighting of schol-arliness and timeliness when rating journal value, especially when the practitioner-research orientation of the journal is considered. D n a 1982 survey of ARL direc-tors and deans of library schools, David F. Kohl and Charles H. Davis obtained subjective ratings of thirty-one core li-brary science journals in terms of their importance for promotion and tenure decisions. 1 Using a five-point scale, di-rectors and deans rated those journals with which they were familiar. Kohl and Davis then used these ratings to rank or-der the journal set into a perceived hier-archy of journal prestige. Critics of sub-jective journal rankings have argued that such rankings are "artificially pre-cise indicators"2 which may, in fact, not be significantly different from each other. 3 Whether these rankings reflect an actual hierarchy of journal impor-tance or whether they merely group journals into clusters of high and low prestige, members of the-academic com-munity do use them to identify top li-brary and information science (LIS) jour-nals. For example, in a statistical profile of College & Research Libraries (C&RL) on its fiftieth anniversary, Paul Metz de-scribed C&RL as "one of the most widely respected journals in librarian-ship,' ' noting that ARL directors and li-brary school deans ranked it first and third, respectively, in terms of "its value for tenure and promotion decisions at their institutions. ''4 A ''self-fulfilling prophecy " occurs because, once publi-cized, these subjective rankings influ-ence assessment of the best outlet for a journal article and the subsequent weight assigned to it in personnel deci