Financial Management's Success as an Academic Journal

Financial Management (Financial Management Association), Autumn, 1999 by Kenneth A. Borokhovich, Robert J. Bricker, Betty J. Simkins

Table 1 presents the SSCI impact factors for all 14 journals from 1984 through 1997. In the early years, FM's impact factor remained within a narrow range, but its rank dropped as more journals appeared. After 1993, its rank started to improve. The highest impact factors occur in 1996 and 1997, reflecting the current influence of the journal. However, even a casual examination of the impact factors across journals shows that the impact factors vary considerably over time. To control for this variability, Figure 2 ranks the journals by their three-year average impact factor for the period 1995-1997. FM ranks fourth. The evidence in Table 1 and Figure 2 shows that the influence of the journal begins to increase after the advent of FPE in 1993. This evidence again implies a subtle change in mission toward an increasing focus on, and increasing success as, an academic journal.

Starbuck [2] forecasts that the upward trend in FM's impact factor will continue. He uses an exponential smoothing technique to remove random fluctuations from the historic annual impact factors, giving the most weight to the last two years. FM's forecasted impact factor for 1998 is 1.368, up from the actual 1.119 in 1997. If the trend continues, the forecasted value for 2000 is 1.850. Based on these projections, Starbuck has classified FM as a rising star.

FM's recent increase in influence appears to be attributable to its publishing timely research in developing areas of wide interest as measured by the SSCI's immediacy index. As shown in Table 2, FM ranked no worse than fourth among the 12 finance journals included in the SSCI from 1995-1997. In fact, it ranked just behind JFE in each of those years, just as it does for the three-year average immediacy index for the same years presented in Figure 3.

One possible criticism of both the impact factor and the immediacy index is that they tend to be current or short-term measures of influence, possibly dependent on fads. Deurenberg's Index, the product of the impact factor and the cited half-life, controls for this problem by combining short- and long-term measures. To be highly ranked by this measure, a journal must have influential current articles as well as influential articles published in the past. Figure 4 presents the three-year average Index for 1995-1997. FM maintains its relative rank among the journals, indicating that its influence is not just short-term.

III. Concluding Remarks

The evidence indicates that Financial Management currently ranks as a leading finance journal, and that it has been increasing its influence in recent years. If the increased influence is due in part to the introduction of Financial Practice and Education, the trend can be expected to continue. As FM turns over full responsibility for serving the needs of practitioners to FPE and the Contemporary Finance Digest, it can focus on its strength. This focus on publishing original scholarly research of the highest quality should lead to even greater influence in the future.