The relative importance of journals used in finance research

The relative importance of various finance and related journals to research published in major finance journals is determined by noting the frequency that all other journals are cited in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Journal of Money, Credit and Banking during the period 1980 to mid−1985. Journals are ranked on the basis of their actual number of citations, citations per article, and citations per 10,000 words published annually. Results give an objective criterion for evaluating the relative impact on the major finance literature of writing in alternative journals. The list of journals developed with the citations methodology differs markedly, on the whole, from the list ranked by Coe and Weinstock (1983) who simply surveyed department chairpersons. Journals that are common to both lists, however, are ranked very much alike, indicating that chairpersons may rank journals they think to include in a subjective list in a way that is consistent with the citations criterion.