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The Association of Business Schools¡¯ assesses the quality of 1,401 business and management publications worldwide, based on citation scores and the judgements of leading researchers.

It is designed to help academics to make decisions about where they should seek to have their work published and to help deans to evaluate performance.

But some scholars complain that the guide has become too powerful in decisions on recruitment, promotion and salary review, and that as a consequence they are assessed only on where they publish, not what they publish.

In the latest edition of the guide, the award of the 4* ¡°journal of distinction¡± accolade to 33 publications represents an increase since the last version, published in 2010, when 22 reached this grade.

However, since the previous issue encompassed only 823 titles, the proportion of journals considered 4* has declined, from 2.7 per cent to 2.4 per cent.

The new guide gives 85 journals (6.1 per cent) a quality rating of 4, meaning that they publish the ¡°most original and best executed research¡±, compared with 72 (8.7 per cent) in the last edition.

Some 312 journals (22.3 per cent) were rated as 3, meaning that they publish ¡°original and well executed research¡±, compared with 230 (.9 per cent) last time.

There were 481 titles (34.3 per cent) ranked 2, meaning they publish ¡°original research of an acceptable standard¡±, and 490 in the bottom 1 category, classed as journals publishing work of a ¡°recognised, but more modest standard¡±.

The guide divides journals into 22 different subject areas and judges economics to have the highest number of 4* journals, with six. Marketing had five, while accounting and general management had four each.

Geoffrey Wood of Warwick Business School and David Peel of Lancaster University Management School, the guide¡¯s co-editors, say that they recognise that any attempt to differentiate between journals will ¡°naturally be contentious¡±.

Writing in the guide¡¯s introduction, they say that ¡°exceptional scholarly work may be found in many places¡± but that it ¡°tends to be clustered in particular locales and journals¡±.

¡°Identifying such locales is a difficult and fraught process, but we remain convinced that it is better that it is done through the involvement of scholarly experts and their associations than without,¡± the editors say.

Professor Wood told Times Higher Education that the guide aimed ¡°to provide scholars with clear goalposts against which to aim for in seeking to progress their careers¡±.

¡°Although the guide is not intended to be fully inclusive, inclusion in the guide is an indicator that the journal should uphold high scholarly standards, and treat authors professionally and with respect,¡± he said.

The next edition of the guide is scheduled to be published in 2018.

For full coverage of the ABS journal guide, see this week¡¯s THE

chris.havergal@tesglobal.com