Bill,

I agree with you that citation counts can be problematic. However, Bill
Starbuck (who teaches at the Stern School) has ranked 509 journals by
their estimated citation impact scores.  See the section entitled
"Citation of Journals Related to Business" at the bottom of Bill's
webpage:  http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~wstarbuc/  Three of the top ten
journals that are "most central to business" (as measured by the number
of times they are cited in business journals) are law reviews.  Five of
the top twenty and thirteen of the top fifty are law reviews--ranked
ahead of many of the leading journals in other business school
disciplines.  

The good news is that law review scholarship is so well received in
business journals--which should provide support for the argument that
law reviews are leading journals in our field.  The bad news is that
this data doesn't explain individual low citation counts when someone is
reviewed for promotion and tenure.  

George

-----Original Message-----
From: Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) Talk
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lee Reed
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 5:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: PRJ/AACSBI Issues


   Regarding the difficulty of convincing non-law business colleagues
about the worth of law reviews, I can relate that Georgia once lost a
promising assistant professor to a law school career in part because our
department head at the time dismissed an article's acceptance in the
Texas Law Review because it was a "student publication." What I've done
in the past about my own law review articles is at evaluation time to go
through the volume the article appears in and list the luminaries who
have published in that law review. Using this strategy,I believe I have
gotten several department heads to agree that law reviews are worthwhile
publication outlets, although "different."

   A related and equally serious research challenge for legal studies
faculty comes when the business school evaluation process questions why
our articles aren't cited more, i.e., like the other areas are.  I think
that the answer lies in the fact that research areas for business school
social sciences is far narrower than  in the larger and more open-ended
field of law--thus more people writing about fewer subjects-- and
because legal scholarship is closer to history and philosophy than to
social and physical science where the writing about methodologies rather
than content predominates, but for whatever reason my business
colleagues have always looked askance at our relative lack of citations.
Any thoughts? 

Missed seeing you all at San FRANcisco this time. Next year
for sure.

Lee