From mjohnson@siu.edu Sun Aug 18 12:54:30 2002 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g7IJsTeY049606 for ; Sun, 18 Aug 2002 12:54:29 -0700 Received: FROM mxu4.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Sun Aug 18 12:54:29 2002 -0700 Received: from mailsmtp.siu.edu (mailsmtp.siu.edu [131.230.254.197]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.06) with ESMTP id g7IJsSs8028987 for ; Sun, 18 Aug 2002 12:54:28 -0700 Received: from mail.siu.edu (mail.siu.edu [131.230.254.198]) by mailsmtp.siu.edu (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g7IJiev20320 for ; Sun, 18 Aug 2002 14:44:40 -0500 Received: from [131.230.121.40] (ws121040.forlang.siu.edu [131.230.121.40]) by mail.siu.edu (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g7IJkrx53558 for ; Sun, 18 Aug 2002 14:46:53 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: mjohnson@saluki-mail.siu.edu Message-Id: Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 14:54:21 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: "David M. Johnson" Subject: Evaluating journals Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="============_-1182422034==_ma============" --============_-1182422034==_ma============ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" My university, Southern Illinois at Carbondale, is making a greater effort to quantify the quality of journals as part of the ongoing trend to make this place run more like a business (though even our Chancellor may soon realize that he ought not to call himself a "campus CEO" given recent events). I searched the classics archives for some previous discussion of this matter, and found only the wise qualitative words of Dan Tompkins, from 1998. >It is interesting that our profession is not quite as afflicted by >"ranking" notions as others. Social scientists I know rate their >colleagues routinely not by judging the quality of their work, but by >noting the status level of journals that publish it. In Classics, we >probably have informal rankings in our head but nothing so formal; and we >recognize that journal acceptance reflects chance and taste as well as >quality. >Full text: >http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu:8080/hyper-lists/classics-l/listserve_archives/log98/9801d/9801d.221.html My quandary is that I'm a tenure track classicist in a foreign language department that doesn't know Classical Philology from Classical Bulletin; I therefore thought it might be informative to ask the collective wisdom of the list about journals. While it would indeed be noble to buck the trend of resorting to such rankings, they are a reality at my university, and in a university without many classicists capable of judging one's work, judgments on journals (together with outside letters, which are subject to their own flaws) will largely drive the evaluation of my scholarship. No doubt many others on the list find themselves in similar situations. The only 'objective' source of info on journals I know of are the figures published by the APA's CSWMG to check acceptance rates and other figures for fairness regarding gender and ethnicity. It is easy enough to calculate overall acceptance rates from these figures, but these figures aren't terribly informative, even as such figures go: most of the journals tracked by the APA in 1997, 1998, and 1999 accepted between 35 and 40 percent of their submissions. And of couse the APA figures are only for North American Journals. So here, at last, are my querries: a) Is it indeed your feeling that there is no clear hierarchy of classical journals, as the rough parity in acceptance rates would seem to indicate? b) Is there any existing source for judging classical journal prestige, whether it be an article somewhere, a previous discussion on this list or elsewhere else that I have missed, or something else? c) If you are game, what are your picks for the top 10, say, general classical journals worldwide? My university is trying to come up with a list of journals characterized as "Outstanding recognition in the field, highly prestigious"; such journals, in the adminstrative lingo, "are widely considered career builders and that bring the greatest prestige and visibility to colleagues in your field." Such journals rank "5" on a scale of 1-5. d) Any similar picks for a similar lists in classical sub-fields such as philosophy and history? David Johnson -- David M. Johnson Assistant Professor Classics Section Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures-4521 Southern Illinois University, Carbondale Carbondale IL 62901-4521 --============_-1182422034==_ma============ Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Evaluating journals
My university, Southern Illinois at Carbondale, is making a greater effort to quantify the quality of journals as part of the ongoing trend to make this place run more like a business (though even our Chancellor may soon realize that he ought not to call himself a "campus CEO" given recent events).  I searched the classics archives for some previous discussion of this matter, and found only the wise qualitative words of Dan Tompkins, from 1998.

It is interesting that our profession is not quite as afflicted by
"ranking" notions as others.  Social scientists I know rate their
colleagues routinely not by judging the quality of their work, but by
noting the status level of journals that publish it.  In Classics, we
probably have informal rankings in our head but nothing so formal; and we
recognize that journal acceptance reflects chance and taste as well as
quality.
Full text: http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu:8080/hyper-lists/classics-l/listserve_archives/log98/9801d/9801d.221.html

My quandary is that I'm a tenure track classicist in a foreign language department that doesn't know Classical Philology from Classical Bulletin; I therefore thought it might be informative to ask the collective wisdom of the list about journals.  While it would indeed be noble to buck the trend of resorting to such rankings, they are a reality at my university, and in a university without many classicists capable of judging one's work, judgments on journals (together with outside letters, which are subject to their own flaws) will largely drive the evaluation of my scholarship.   No doubt many others on the list find themselves in similar situations.

The only 'objective' source of info on journals I know of are the figures published by the APA's CSWMG to check acceptance rates and other figures for fairness regarding gender and ethnicity.  It is easy enough to calculate overall acceptance rates from these figures, but these figures aren't terribly informative, even as such figures go: most of the journals tracked by the APA in 1997, 1998, and 1999 accepted between 35 and 40 percent of their submissions.   And of couse the APA figures are only for North American Journals.

So here, at last, are my querries:
 
a)  Is it indeed your feeling that there is no clear hierarchy of classical journals, as the rough parity in acceptance rates would seem to indicate?

b) Is there any existing source for judging classical journal prestige, whether it be an article somewhere, a previous discussion on this list or elsewhere else that I have missed, or something else?

c) If you are game, what are your picks for the top 10, say, general classical journals worldwide?  My university is trying to come up with a list of journals characterized as "Outstanding recognition in the field, highly prestigious";  such journals, in the adminstrative lingo, "are widely considered career builders and that bring the greatest prestige and visibility to colleagues in your field."   Such journals rank "5" on a scale of 1-5.
 
d) Any similar picks for a similar lists in classical sub-fields such as philosophy and history?

David Johnson


--
David M. Johnson
Assistant Professor
Classics Section
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures-4521
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Carbondale IL  62901-4521
--============_-1182422034==_ma============-- .