Economists care about where they publish—to the cost of the profession

LIKE most academics, economists are obsessed with how many research papers they produce, and where they are published. A new paper by James Heckman and Sidharth Moktan from the University of Chicago shows why—and why that might not be good for the profession.

The authors analyse the career paths and publication records of researchers at 35 highly regarded economics departments in America. They consider the impact on tenure decisions of publications in different journals, assuming that they are cited the same number of times. Young academics who had three papers published in what are universally regarded as the top five journals were nearly five times as likely to gain tenure in a given year as those with papers in less prestigious journals. A single publication in the top five nearly doubles the chance. The impact of a top-five publication is weaker for women, which means they need more publications for the same outcome—though the authors warn that their sample includes only a few women, and that they did not take maternity leave into account.

Junior researchers themselves know very well that a top-five publication is the surest route to success. In a survey by the authors almost all ranked the number of publications in top-tier journals as the most important factor influencing tenure.

Economists are producing ever more research, and measuring the quality of new ideas is not easy. That a paper has been accepted by a top journal could signal that the ideas are good, and the author worth promoting. But Professor Heckman and Mr Moktan argue that the magic five journals are imperfect arbiters of quality. Some others are as widely cited. And around a third of the 20 most-cited papers, according to Research Papers in Economics, an online archive, were published elsewhere. To the extent that citations are a good measure of quality (also disputed), placing such weight on those five journals seems to overestimate the quality of some papers and underestimate that of others.

The authors also find evidence of home bias. Journals attached to certain universities are more likely to publish papers from staff there, suggesting that quality might not be the only criterion for publication.

The research makes a case for expanding the number of top-tier journals. A more radical solution would be to encourage authors to publish in open-source repositories with real-time peer review. Some of the sciences are already moving in that direction. Many economists already publish early versions of their research as working papers, because journal articles take so long to appear, even though such papers have less impact on tenure decisions.

Is change possible? Young researchers who want to advance will still try to produce top-tier publications. Senior academics who sit on tenure boards, and came up through the system themselves, may see little reason for change. One cause for optimism is that insiders are raising the alarm: Professor Heckman is a Nobel laureate and an editor of the Journal of Political Economy, one of the top five. Two other Nobel laureates, Angus Deaton and George Akerlof, have also spoken about the dangers of over-reliance on those journals. But, as economists know, incentives matter.

This article appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline “Tyranny of the few”