In recent years it has been our practice to publish the annual reports from the editors of the Economic Journal and the Econometrics Journal in the January Newsletter. As a result of recent changes to the Society’s administrative calendar, we shall henceforth be publishing those reports in our April issue. In the meantime, members might be interested in this latest information about the EJ’s impact factor. The article was contributed by the EJ editorial office.
In June 2017, the 2016 Impact Factors were released and we are delighted that the Economic Journal saw an increase in its two-year Impact Factor over 2015, to 2.608 from 2.370 (the taller bars in the chart below).
Not shown, but also welcome, is the journal’s five-year Impact Factor also increased from 3.578 in 2015 to 3.859 in 2016.
The Economic Journal on ‘Google Scholar’
‘Google Scholar’ has produced a new ranking of economics journals, based upon citations of articles published in the last 5 complete years (2012-16). In this ranking the Economic Journal ranks 13th (just ahead of the Journal of the European Economic Association in 14th place and just below the Journal of Political Economy in 12th place). Focusing more narrowly on academic refereed economics journals, this ranking places the Economic Journal as the 10th most cited.
Altmetric Statistics November 2017
An alternative to using citations as a measure of scholarly impact in the last few years has been the development of ‘altmetrics’ as an alternative. Altmetrics use a wider range of impact measures (or definitions of ‘impact’). They can include (but are not limited to) peer reviews on Faculty of 1000, citations on Wikipedia and in public policy documents, discussions on research blogs, mainstream media coverage, bookmarks on reference managers like Mendeley, and mentions on social networks such as Twitter. One of several organisations providing this service is Altmetric.com.
• In the last 12 months, 351 EJ articles received online mentions recorded by Altmetric. A large part of the activity came from tweeters, who contributed 4,139 tweets collectively. This is up from 2016, when 161 EJ articles received online mentions recorded by Altmetric.
• EJ articles were mentioned in 664 policy papers, published by the UK Government (GOV.UK), the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Chatham House, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Australian Policy Online, to name but a few. Again, this is up from 2016, when EJ articles were mentioned in 121 policy papers.
• News Outlets contributed 399 mentions in total. These outlets include BBC News, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, the New York Times, International Business News, Le Journal de Montréal, The Guardian, and a range of local UK newspapers. The marked increase from 2016 is noted here too with News Outlets contributing 139 mentions in total in 2016.
• 180 blogs, such as the LSE Business Review, Microeconomic Insights, Aguanomics, Big Think, BREXIT, and Manchester Policy Blogs, have mentioned EJ articles in the past year.
• There were 80 Wikipedia pages that mentioned articles (56 Wikipedia pages in 2016); sometimes with articles being referred to in separate pages (8 articles had more than one mention).
• In the past year, Altmetric has recorded 92 Facebook wall posts that mention EJ articles up from 15 in 2016.
• The highest Scoring Altmetric article in the last 12 months is: ‘Are you happy while you work?’ by Alex Bryson and George MacKerron with a score of 644. These mentions come from 67 news stories (from 66 outlets, including BBC News, NBC, Fox News, and Newsweek), from 131 tweets (from 117 users), as well as from blogs and Facebook.
Top downloads in 2017
The most popular downloads of papers published in the EJ during 2017 are as follows:
‘Are You Happy While You Work?’ by Alex Bryson and George MacKerron
‘Longitudinal Evidence for a Midlife Nadir in Human Well-being: Results from Four Data Sets’ by Terence C Cheng, Nattavudh Powdthavee and Andrew J Oswald
‘Does Quality Affect Patients’ Choice of Doctor? Evidence from England’ by Rita Santos, Hugh Gravelle and Carol Propper
‘Second-Degree Moral Hazard In A Real-World Credence Goods Market’ by Loukas Balafoutas, Rudolf Kerschbamer and Matthias Sutter
‘Health Insurance Without Single Crossing: Why Healthy People Have High Coverage’ by Jan Boone and Christoph Schottmüller
‘Two-way Capital Flows and Global Imbalances’ by Pengfei Wang, Yi Wen and Zhiwei Xu
‘Books are Forever: Early Life Conditions, Education and Lifetime Earnings in Europe’ by Giorgio Brunello, Guglielmo Weber and Christoph T Weiss
‘How Social Preferences Shape Incentives in (Experimental) Markets for Credence Goods’ by Rudolf Kerschbamer, Matthias Sutter and Uwe Dulleck
'Stealing to Survive? Crime and Income Shocks in Nineteenth Century France', by Vincent Bignon, Eve Caroli and Roberto Galbiati
'Jewish Persecutions and Weather Shocks: 1100-1800', by Robert Warren Anderson, Noel D Johnson and Mark Koyama
