Journal ranking effects on junior academics: Identity fragmentation and politicization

In this paper, drawing on autoethnographic material, we document how we have been responding to our school's research incentive policy and its adoption of a new journal ranking process that has resulted in the marginalization of most accounting journals. Overall, we contribute to the accounting literature on journal rankings by reflecting on their impact on researchers’ identities. Our personal narratives illustrate how journal rankings, embedded in a research incentive policy, can fragment and politicize junior faculties’ identities, driving them, professionally and intellectually, into contradictory directions and throwing them into academic politics. In terms of sustainability, identity fragmentation and identity politicization are ambivalent processes. They can marginalize junior researchers who do not have the political skills required to play the games of academic politics and discourage those who feel trapped in identity conflicts. On the other hand, identity fragmentation and politicization can also stimulate a deeper form of reflexivity and action. Through increased awareness of self and the political stakes of the field, junior researchers might be able to promote greater diversity and respond actively to the needs of a sustainable accounting research environment.