Responding to incentives or gaming the system? How UK business academics respond to the Academic Journal Guide

Hudson, Robert

Abstract

Journal lists for the assessment of academic performance are widely used worldwide and inform many important decisions, such as, academic workload, salary, hiring, promotion, and tenure. The use of such lists, however, has long been a very controversial area in academia. Surprisingly, to date, there has been little empirical research investigating directly how journal lists have influenced publishing patterns by academics. This paper examines how the Academic Journal Guide (AJG) produced by the Chartered association of Business Schools has influenced the publishing patterns of UK academics by observing the authorship of over 400,000 papers published between 1 January 2011 and 30 June 2021. In terms of the AJG ratings, UK researchers have improved the quality of their research outputs over the period. There is strong evidence, however, that researchers in subject areas primarily associated with business schools are targeting the ratings rather than other measures of research quality. In these areas, journals that have been promoted/demoted in the AJG list have a higher/lower proportion of papers by UK researchers than similar journals that have not changed status. In addition, journals that have been promoted unjustifiably by reference to other metrics attract particularly high proportions of papers by UK researchers whereas those that have been demoted justifiably attract particularly low proportions of papers by UK researchers. Overall, whilst researchers are responding to publishing incentives, one of their strategies for doing so seems to be to game the AJG list. I discuss the implications of my findings and ways in which the negative aspects could be reduced.

Citation

Hudson, R. (2024). Responding to incentives or gaming the system? How UK business academics respond to the Academic Journal Guide. Research Policy, 53(9), Article 105082. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2024.105082

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 22, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Jul 26, 2024
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jul 22, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 27, 2026
• Journal: Research Policy
• Print ISSN: 0048-7333
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 53
• Issue: 9
• Article Number: 105082
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2024.105082
• Keywords: Academic Journal Guide; Business Schools; Gaming; Performance management systems
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4741430