Is the journal ratings game good for researchers?

The ABS is the Association of Business Schools, (not Business Studies). It is an association of Deans. The scholarly society for academics is the British Academy of Management. This is their statement: The British Academy of Management, the scholarly association for business and management lecturers and researchers, expressed reservations about the so called ‘ABS List’ of elite journals released today . British Academy of Management Chair, Professor Nic Beech (Dundee University) said : "British business and management research is lauded around the world for its intellectual innovation and pluralism, drawing on the whole range of social science and humanities traditions. It applies these to develop new academic knowledge, and have to have a positive impact on businesses, organisations, managers, and indeed the everyday life of all our citizens. " British Academy of Management President, Professor Sir Cary Cooper (Lancaster University) added: "We are particularly concerned about any ranking list which devalues research with real world impact and insights, in favour of that aimed at topping league tables. Research in business and management must aspire to positive impacts on academic knowledge and on the real world. Ranking lists that favour one way of thinking – for example traditional and narrow ‘functionalist’ approaches – underplay the much broader strengths of a pluralistic approach to business and management research. This kind of innovative scholarship, ironically, is what British business schools – and our members - have a particular worldwide reputation for being good at." BAM Vice-Chair, Research and Publications, Professor Bill Cooke (York University) also stated: ‘lists like this even if well intentioned have problematic unintended consequences. Once the ABS has got over its longstanding technical problems and the list is widely available, we intend to survey our members regarding the methodology of the list, the extent to which it is inclusive or exclusive, and what to do about the list culture’" The Association of Business Schools is an association comprising UK Business School Deans. The British Academy of Management has just under 2000 members, runs two scholarly journals, an annual conference in the UK with over 900 participants and approximately 60 courses and academic events per annum. It has a directly elected council, executive, and President

The latest ABS list is extraordinary first for the bizarre way that it has been released, with a quite blatant data harvesting put in the way of gaining access. But second because it has now become quite clear that it does not stand as a measure of quality as defined by REF judgements i.e. there was a massive divergence between REF panel scores and ABS journal scores. Institutions that slavishly followed the ABS list came a cropper in REF. It is hard to see what useful purpose the list serves except to entrench prejudice. Certainly it bears no relation to substantive intellectual quality. As the comment above shows, it has even been disowned by BAM. It's basically a worthless exercise.