Daren - In law publishing, a journal's peer-review status is not a critical factor in measuring quality of the outlet.  If you'd like a guide, the quality of the law school is analogous to the quality of the law journal.  There are exceptions of course (e.g. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Journal of Legal Studies), but peer-review is not the metric for quality.
 
Carol - I found that some business professors may not appreciate the notion that law journals can be boiled down to a top 5, top 10, or even top 20.  The best argument I could think of is that law journals produce far fewer unsolicited articles (not notes or symposia pieces) per year than the typical business journal.  If I remember correctly, the Journal of Finance (an excellent journal) publishes around 50 articles per year.  The ABLJ publishes only 15, the Columbia Business Law Review published only two (!) articles in the year I checked.  Many law reviews publish less than 10 articles per year.  The argument is that we law faculty should have the same number of publication slots as the business faculty do.  For law, that requires many more journals.
 
When push comes to shove though, some people just can't get past the fact that we don't have a 'top 5-10' list.  So they make one.
 
Robert
 
Robert C. Bird
Assistant Professor & Ackerman Scholar
Department of Marketing and Law
University of Connecticut
email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> 
View my research on my SSRN Author page: 
http://ssrn.com/author=56987 <http://ssrn.com/author=56987>  

________________________________

From: Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) Talk on behalf of Daren Bakst
Sent: Mon 5/4/2009 5:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Ranking system for articles--A Rant continued


I'm wondering whether getting published in an ABA-approved law school review is viewed with as much respect among all of you and those hiring and promoting business law faculty as getting something published in a peer-reviewed (by attorneys) journal.

Thanks for any feedback you can provide.

Daren Bakst, J.D. LL.M.
Legal and Regulatory Analyst
John Locke Foundation

Adjunct Professor
Barton College
http://www.barton.edu <http://www.barton.edu/> 


On 5/4/09 5:14 PM, "Miller, Carol J" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:



	Some reinvention of the wheel is inevitable with a new administrator.   However, why do administers in general think that the path to greatness and increasing stature of one's university is paved with journal rankings? Are there any positive ways of convincing a new Dean that going down the ranking path is a bad idea? 
	 
	Three years ago we got a merit system crammed down our throats and applied retroactively the first year.  Things have leveled out with that for the moment on the merit front, especially since there is no merit money (and salaries are frozen this year) - but we still have the mandatory evaluations and rankings.   For that merit effort we created a very generalized categorization of journals.  Now apparently a much more detailed list is imminent.   It is not the existing Faculty Evaluation Committee or a merit committee or research committee that is developing the initial list.  It is an ad hoc committee that the Dean has appointed to set "travel budget" criteria.   It will have a major backdoor impact on merit, tenure ....  We do have a really good finance professor as our department's representative who is open to input from the law faculty.  But the process is apt to be so unnecessarily divisive and uncollegial - and the fight is over a very restricted amount of funds in the current economy.  Why is this pseudo measure of quality deemed to be a "good" idea when even most of the best authors at a university think it is not and it is so harmful to the collegial working environment?
	 
	Carol Miller
	 
	
	From: Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) Talk [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Salbu
	Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 1:01 PM
	To: [log in to unmask]
	Subject: Ranking system for articles--A Rant, apologies in advance
	
	 
	  
	

		Having an official list/ranking of journals is one of the worst trends in business schools.  Among the negative effects are (1) bifurcation of articles into "okay" and "not okay" based on a crude proxy; (2) gaming on the part of departments that seek to load their lists with journals that benefit themselves; (3) application of standardized journal ranking processes across very disparate disciplines, and (4) acceptance/encouragement of career decisions made by people who haven't even read the work, but use the publication vehicle as a crude, often inaccurate proxy for research quality.
		We got rid of "The List" two years ago and the sky DIDN'T fall in.  Tenure Committees and Deans need to do their jobs--actually read the work and select the right outside
		 reviewers--and stop looking for facile, easy, poor measures.
		I know this doesn't help anyone who is required to come up with a List.  But it has become one of my bugbears and so I rant whenever the subject comes up.
		 Steve Salbu 
		

	Dean and Stephen P. Zelnak,  Jr. Chair College of Management Georgia Institute of Technology 800 W. Peachtree St., NW Atlanta, GA  30308-0520