Impact factors and peer judgment: The case of regional science journals

Summary

This paper discusses the relationship between Journal Impact Factors and the scientific community's judgment of the quality of journals in regional science, a discipline closely related to economics and geography. The paper compares the results of a survey inquiring the quality of journals in the discipline with the impact factors of these journals for a total of five years. The comparison shows that no significant positive correlation between the impact factors and the peer judgments can be found. In many cases the correlation turns out to be negative - in some cases even significantly.