BE:ER is beyond suppression

• Date: 01 October 2020
• Author: Ralf Barkemeyer,Jennifer S.A. Leigh,Dima Jamali,Georges Samara
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12318
• Published date: 01 October 2020

Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:661–663. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer  

|

  661© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12318

EDITORIAL

BE:ER is beyond suppression

1 | INTRODUCTION

To say that the release of jou rnal impact factor s is the Oscars of the

academic wor ld is a bit of hyperbo le. Yet, we know that it is wit h

great anticipat ion that many natural science an d social science jour-

nals await the annu al “reveal” of Clari vate's Journal Im pact Factors

(IFs) each June. And , now as many of you know, it was quite a sh ocker

for us this year as BE: ER's IF was suppre ssed due to our sel f-cita-

tion (Clarivate A nalytics , 2020). The BE:ER co mmunity of aut hors,

associate editor s, publisher s, and us co-edit ors have experie nced a

wide range of intens e emotions beginning w ith confusion and befu d-

dlement, the n moving to anger and s hame and more re cently, onto

resolve and can dor. In this editorial, we plan to sh are our experience

as a portal to a bi gger discussion about acad emic impact. While the

suppression is a bout BE:ER, b oth this conversat ion and the conse -

quences are tr uly much bigger and much m ore unseemly about us as

a broader academic community.

First, we prov ide a summary of the detail s of how we got on the

“naughty” lis t to begin. Next, we will off er a whirlwind tour through

alternative qua lity metric s. Lastly, we will di scuss our recovery

plan. You will get throug h this editorial r eal and honest i nsights

from what is known to b e a small circle of dedicated co-ed itors, for

a well respected jo urnal, and our j ourney over time, a s well as our

expec tations of a resounding r ecovery from this tempo rary setback.

The Clarivate IF t racks the nu mber of times a pub lished arti cle

has been cited in any j ournal that is part of t he Web of Science (WoS)

collection . While there are various ve rsions available, the one t hat is

most commonly u sed is the 2-year IF—for any given r eview period,

it captures how of ten the average r esearch art icle has been cite d

that had been pub lished in the 2 years prior to this pe riod. To take

the example of BE :ER and its recent IF per formance, the 68 res earch

articles th at were publishe d in 2017/2018 attracted a total of 259

citations in 2019, which would ha ve resulted in an IF in the area of 3.8

had it not been suppr essed. At least this is what we assu me our IF for

the 2019 JCR window to be (or to have b een): there are a number of

open questio ns regarding th e exact calcu lations under lying the IF,

for example, in re lation to how review art icles or papers that have a n

“early view” st atus are taken into account. Sinc e Clarivate Analytics

does not disclos e the exact for mula that is used , we can only pro-

vide a rough est imate for our performance—in pa rticular given that

Clarivate's cal culation metho d apparently h as been revised fo r the

most recent revi ew period.

Moving on to the self-cit ation ratio—an d hence the reaso n we

ended up on the “na ughty” list—this ratio expresse s the percentage

of WoS citations that s tems from our own jou rnal. In other wo rds,

the number of tim es BE:ER research art icles published in 2017/2018

were cited by BE:ER pa pers publishe d in 2019, divided by the total

number of citati ons across the enti re WoS universe (inclu ding BE:ER).

For BE:ER, Clar ivate has established a se lf-citation ratio of 52%. We

acknowledge th at the self-citation rate is hig h, but it has been at this

level througho ut the last 5 year s (and thus throug hout the perio d

and even before mem bers of the curr ent editorial te am started a t

BE:ER). Based on o ur calculations, the self-citat ion rate has peaked

in the 2017 JCR window (53%) an d has in fact decreased in th e JCR

2019 window. We were, therefore , very surprised that Cl arivate de-

cided to suppres s our IF this year—without prior war ning.

In addition, th ere are a number of f actors to consi der when in-

terpreting th e self-citation ratio. First , academic outlets t hat are not

part of the WoS unive rse are not conside red. In other wor ds, jour-

nals without a Cl arivate IF or inclusion in the A&H CI/ESCI, working

papers and oth er types of gr ay literature, ed ited books, an d others

are not taken into acco unt. This is a problem we shar e with most so-

cial science jour nals, leading to a lower IF as well as a hi gher self-ci-

tation ratio.

Second, we are a rel atively small, explicit ly interdisciplinary j our-

nal spanning a bro ad range of topic s and discipline s—as such, we

are home to a numbe r of smaller and rel atively distin ct academi c

communities, b oth in terms of topic s (e.g., CSR an d development;

responsible HR , corporate governance) an d geographies (e.g., with a

particularly strong presence in Spanish-speaking countries). Both of

these facto rs are likely to naturally inf late our self-citation rate (wit h

small academic communities directly interacting with each other's

work).

Third, not leas t given its titl e (Business Ethic s), BE:ER is com-

monly seen as th e little siblin g of older and gener ally more est ab-

lished busines s ethics journ als such as Journ al of Business Ethic s

(JBE, Sprin ger) or Business Eth ics Quarter ly (BEQ, Cambr idge

University Pr ess). At the same tim e, BE:ER arti cles are most fr e-

quently cited by jo urnals such as Su stainabilit y (MDPI), Corpo rate

Social Respons ibility and Envi ronmental Ma nagement (Wi ley), and

Journal of Clean er Production (Elsevie r). On the one hand, this illus-

trates the inter disciplinar y scope that is par tially distinct from JBE

and BEQ. On the other h and, we believe that the ab sence of JBE and

BEQ citations is hur ting our self-cit ation rate—whic h is something

we, of course, can not control.

Fourth, we have be en working ver y hard to close the g ap be-

tween BE:ER and t hese more establishe d journals such as JBE and

BEQ. We are certain th at the quality of B E:ER manuscrip ts has