Journal and author impact metrics: An editorial

This editorial offers a few thoughts on making sense of journal and article impact metrics. The editorial advocates measures of journal productivity and author impact that go beyond the use of a single measure of journal impact factor. The editorial includes data on the ranking of business and finance journals by journal productivity-impact metrics as well as journal impact factor values that editors sometimes refer to in off-site “Meet the Editors” sessions. Members of tenure and promotion committees frequently refer to impact factors of the journals candidates' publications appear in. Such metrics sometimes are the primary rationale for hiring, promoting, and firing faculty candidates even though the metric dominating thinking is unrepresentative of most faculty candidates' scholarly impacts and is highly unrepresentative of the majority of articles in all academic journals. This editorial suggests the use of multiple metrics for evaluating journals and candidates scholarly contributions. The editorial demonstrates a proposal for using a weighted journal productivity-impact factor and the creation of formal templates for evaluating the impact of individual candidate's scholarly contributions.