Business ethics journals have appeared on a few ranked lists that are specific to this niche discipline. As with more traditional academic disciplines, these rankings are used for academic rewards such as faculty tenure and promotion, along with department and school ratings. Journal ranking has been subject to considerable criticism even as its administrative use persists. Among the criticisms are that journal quality is a poor proxy for article quality, citation rate is an imperfect reflection of article influence, and bias (...) may be introduced into rankings by visibility characteristics such as journal age, size, circulation, and experience of the rater with a journal. This research note studies the effect of journal age and size on the rankings of business ethics journals compiled by Beets, Lewis, and Brower, by Albrecht, Thompson, Hoopes, and Rodrigo, and by Serenko and Bontis. Significant correlation was found for journal age with the administratively derived Beets et al. ranking. No significant correlation was found for size in any ranking study. Results were not significant for the Albrecht et al. and the Serenko and Bontis rankings representing the perspectives from surveys of active researchers or citation analysis. Perhaps sometimes a journal’s reputation precedes it, as perception of journal quality may be biased by journal visibility, either because it has been published and available for a number of years, or because it is well known and likely to be cited. (shrink)

This article reports the results of a study of confirmational response bias among social work journals. A contrived research paper with positive findings and its negative mirror image were submitted to two different groups of social work journals and to two comparison groups of journals outside social work. The quantitative results, suggesting bias, are tentative; but the qualitative findings based upon an analysis of the referee comments are clear and consistent. Few referees from prestigious or nonprestcgrous social work journals prepared (...) reviews that were knowledgeable, scientifically astute, or objective. The best reviews came from journals outside of soccal work or from journals that are accepted as social work journals but originate with other disciplines. (shrink)

This essay offers a defense of ‘intellectual authority’, primarily by pointing out the untoward implications of its conceptual opposite, ‘institutional authority’, in a wide variety of contexts. An opening discussion explores conditions for the possibility of intellectual authority in legal, humanistic, and aesthetic disciplines. Social science literature documenting and describing the biasing influence of institutional authority is then canvassed and analyzed in some detail. A final section assays the theoretical significance of various efforts to eliminate non‐intellectual bias and influence, with (...) special reference to the example of “blind reviewing’ of scholarly manuscripts. (shrink)

Rl In response to Somit & Peterson's call for multiple journal manuscript submissions, and consistent with Cicchetti (1991a and 1991b), counterarguments are presented. The policy for multiple submissions is difficult to defend scientifically ana would place an unwarranted burden on both reviewers and journal editors. As such the policy is again rejected. R2 As earlier hypothesized, referee agreement on manuscripts submitted to a major journal in chemistry was significantly higher for acceptance than for rejection. This is consistent with the high (...) acceptance rate (>70%) of this journal. There is significantly more referee agreement on rejection than on acceptance for manuscripts submitted to major journals, in behavioral science and medicine. These journals have high rejection rates (often >70%). (shrink)

The pressure for publication is ever present in academe. Rules for submission are elucidated by conferences, proceedings and journals for the benefit of authors; however, the rules for reviewers and editors are not so well established or consistent. This treatise examines examples of abuse of the editorial process and points to a need for formal recognition of rules for review. The manuscript culminates with proposed Codes of Ethics for researchers, referees and editors and suggestions for improvement of the peer review (...) process. (shrink)