Smoke, Mirrors, and Impact Factor: How Management Scholars Undermine a Managerial Metric

Abstract:The authors analyze leading management journals of the Academy of Management (the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, the Academy of Management Learning and Education, and the Academy of Management Perspectives, as well as the Journal of Management), collecting and analyzing information on the managerial research assessment tool of impact factor (IF) during two time periods—from 1997 through 2005 and from 2006 through 2019. The authors capture the changing nature of journal strategies, examining the number of references, self-citations, and cross-citations. The study shows a general increase in the number of references used, as well as self-citations and cross-citations, resulting in a corresponding IF gain. The evidence suggests some limitations to adopting performance metrics in academia. Thus, academic managers, editors, and authors who focus on IF may be overestimating its impact, obscuring institutional attempts to measure academic research performance.