Assessing the Quality Ranking of theJournal of Advertising, 1986–1997

Abstract Recent attention has been paid to the use of citation analysis as an approach to examining relative journal quality and prestige, as well as the relative scholarly status of academic communities and disciplines. The fundamental notion is that citations are objective indicators of knowledge use by scholars and knowledge flows among academic communities. In that context, the authors examine the journal quality ranking of the Journal of Advertising in relation to 33 marketing, advertising, and business journals over the 1986–1997 time period. They find evidence that JA ranks respectably among specialty marketing, advertising, and business journals, but, as expected, generally below the general marketing and business journals.