Abstract
We use a quality-based approach to assess contributing institutions and authors in international business (IB) research. Specifically, we use Google Scholar citations of individual articles to weigh the number of IB research articles in core IB and other non-IB elite journals. Our approach mitigates concerns about the quality difference among articles across different journals and within individual journals. We find evidence to suggest that IB research in the European and Asia-Pacific regions exhibits an upward trend over the 1995–2011 period. With respect to institutional research quality, we document that an IB program with faculty members working with their peers in foreign countries and the presence of a doctoral program can enhance an institution’s research quality. Prolific authors are very mobile and typically have global experience.
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Notes
The 5-year impact factor of a journal is defined as the total number of citations received in five future years from all articles that appeared in the journal in the year, divided by the total number of articles published in the same year. In short, impact factor is a quantity of article-adjusted citations.
A dummy citation means that the citation is not related to a research study. It is cited because the authors of the citing study have other considerations. A negative citation means that the research study is being cited for its wrong findings or conclusions. Hence, the cited study does not contribute to the knowledge.
These journals are: Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics (Accounting), Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies (Finance), Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Management Sciences (Management), Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Consumer Research (Marketing), MIS Quarterly, and Information Systems Research (information systems).
Journal of International Management (JIMgt) began publishing in 1995, but it was not associated with a major publisher until 1998. The data from 1995 to 1997 were not available online and not available in all of the authors’ libraries. Thus, JIMgt coverage begins in 1998 in our analysis.
Specifically, we have two research assistants conducting independent identification of IB articles in these non-IB elite journals. If there was any discrepancy in their results, one of the authors reviewed the results for further analysis and made the final decision.
SSCI began coverage of IBR in 2005, JWB in 1997, MIR in 2008, and IMR in 1999. Thus, it is not possible to get SSCI citation data from the non-covered articles (a total of 884 articles or about 22 % of the sample), because they are not in the SSCI database. For instance, SSCI does not account for the citations in IB articles in our set of IB and other non-IB elite journals from the articles that published in IBR before 2005, because SSCI did not include IBR articles before 2005 in its database. That is, the citation statistics of all articles in our sample will be severely undercounted if we use SSCI to look up citations.
We combine articles in non-IB elite journals as a group.
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the helpful comments from two anonymous reviewers. Nianhang Xu acknowledges the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71172180), the Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of the People’s Republic of China (Grant No. 201085), and the Fok Ying Tong Education Foundation (141080). The usual caveats apply.
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Xu, N., Poon, W.P.H. & Chan, K.C. Contributing Institutions and Authors in International Business Research: A Quality-Based Assessment. Manag Int Rev 54, 735–755 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11575-014-0207-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11575-014-0207-6