Assessing international journal impact: the case of marketing

Purpose Potential ethnocentric biases in stated preference journal rankings are reviewed and revealed preference ranking methods are investigated. The aim of the paper is to identify an approach to ranking journals that minimises ethnocentric biases and better represents the international impact of research. Design/methodology/approach Coverage of marketing journals in Ulrich's, EBSCO, SSCI, JCR, Scopus and Google Scholar is explored. Citing references to 20 articles are analysed to determine citation time lags and explore the content of SSCI, Scopus and Google Scholar. To further review the extent of citation coverage, h ‐index scores are generated for ten marketing journals using data from SSCI, Scopus and Google Scholar. In total, 36 marketing journals are ranked using the g ‐index and Google Scholar data and results are compared to ten published rankings. Findings Stated preference ranking studies of marketing journals rely on US‐based respondents. The coverage of EBSCO, SSCI, JCR and Scopus databases is not representative of marketing's literature as they have few international sources, and a disproportionate coverage of US‐based journals. Google Scholar provides broader international coverage. The Impact Factor may be inappropriate for marketing journals as a large proportion of citations occur more than five years post‐publication. Results indicate that the g ‐index is a superior approach to measuring the impact of marketing journals internationally. Practical implications Exposure of the limitations in existing ranking methods should encourage improvements in the development and use of journal rankings. Originality/value The investigations present original evidence to support long‐term concerns about approaches to journal ranking and citation analysis.