Ranking of finance journals: Some Google Scholar citation perspectives

We conduct rankings on finance journals based on a rich database of citations for all articles from a set of 23 finance journals during 1990–2010. Our study is a major improvement in the literature by directly measuring the impact of each article within a set of finance journals. Our findings in journal citations generally echo the concern in Smith (2004) that some articles in premier journals have no/low impact while some articles in non-premier journals have high impact. In addition, we document that premier (non-premier) journals exhibit a linear (convex) curve of cumulative normalized citations across zero citation to less than or equal to eight citation buckets. We also show that author concentration index and editorial board members' citations represent alternative methods to evaluate finance journals.

► Our study directly measures the impact of each article. ► Premier (non-premier) journals exhibit a linear (convex) curve of cumulative normalized citations. ► Author concentration index and editorial board members' citations are used to evaluate finance journals.