Thank you for sharing. Nice
article. There is, of course, concentration of power in our
profession. In part, this is unavoidable.
Top journals are run by top department (QJE is edited by
Harvard, JPE by UChicago, Econometrica a little bit all top-5
schools, etc.).
Top departments appoint their people as Editors. We cannot
expect to be otherwise. This affects the review processes, and
may generate some unfairness.
In particular, it is very difficult to publish in top-5 journals
from authors who are not at the top schools (let alone
solo-author papers; I am an exception here, but it was really
hard-fought).
In the US and therefore in the whole profession, tenure and
career depend on where we publish. The rank of the journals
matters. Thus, concentration of power matters. Â
The article seems to suggest that the profession would benefit
from having Editorial boards with shorter fixed-term
appointment.
In my view, it would change little. The names will change, but
it will be always the same people.
So what to do? Well, as Gianluca noted in the email, the
profession is self-adapting to this.
The fact that JEBS's impact factor crossed that of Ecma is a
sign that people do not necessarily value more papers that end
up in top-5 journals than those that do not.
So JEBS may get more attention than Ecma. So in the end, if a
paper is good it will receive attention no matter where it is
published. That's a good thing to have. It was true in the past
and it will remain true in the future.
It should also be mention that theoretical-oriented papers
receive, in general, less cites than empirical-oriented papers.
JEBS publishes more empirical-oriented papers than Ecma.
However, this is not a justification for papers in Ecma that
receive little cites. Even if they are theoretical, these papers
should be of very general interest and so they are expected to
get many cites. Often this does not happen.
My advisor coached me that having a paper in Ecma that gets
little cites it is bad for the CV. It just backfires.
He coached me to submit to Ecma papers when I really think they
have high potential impact. Else, avoid "just trying" to submit
them to Ecma.
Personally, I follow research topics that I feel are important,
no matter where they are published. Papers that I do not think
are good, do not get my praise or my cites, even if they are in
Ecma.
I think this is the best one can do to help the profession to go
in the right direction.
Alessandro