JOBM Takes the Bronze!
by Donald A. Hantula Temple University

If you are reading this article you probably already know that JOBM is a rigorous, high quality journal publishing the best in OBM research as well as critical reviews, theory and discussion articles. What you may not know is that JOBM also ranks as one of the best journals in applied psychology according to the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by Thomson/ISI. The JCR ranked JOBM as the journal in applied psychology with the 3 rd highest impact factor in 2003. Thomson -ISI produces annual journal rankings by discipline and sub-discipline (the JCR) which sort journals based on Impact Factor and includes other analyses of citation practices. Within the behavioral and social sciences it seems that an Impact Factor of 1.0 is becoming a minimum standard for what defines a “quality” journal; that is a journal with an Impact Factor of 1.0 or greater is assumed to publish high-quality research.

The Impact Factor - A Performance Measure for Journals
The “Impact Factor” developed by Eugene Garfield (1972; 1994a,b; 2003) is the normalized frequency that a journal’s articles are cited in the scientific literature, controlling for the number of citable items published (i.e., substantive journal articles, excluding administrative articles & corrections, advertisements), or, how often the ‘average article’ in a particular journal is cited. The Impact Factor is calculated by counting the total number of citations to a journal in year X of citable items published in years X-1 and X-2, divided by the total number of citable items in years X-1 and X-2. For example if in 2004 there were 40 citations to articles published in the Journal of Citation Studies in 2002 and 2003 and the journal published 12 citable articles in 2002 and 18 in 2003, the Impact Factor would be 1.33 [40 / (12 + 18)]. The Impact Factor now is widely used by academic administrators in tenure, promotion, and merit decisions, by library administrators in acquisition and discontinuation decisions when managing collections and budgets, and by researchers and grants officers when evaluating the potential impact of research. But, as Starbuck and Mezias (1996) point out, the Impact Factor is not necessarily a measure of quality but rather one of journal visibility (see Seglen 1997; 1998 for arguments against using the Impact Factor to evaluate journals)

The Impact of JOBM
According to data accessed on the Thomson ISI JCR database in January 2005 and displayed in Table 1, the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management’s Impact Factor in 2003 is 1.793, placing it as the journal with the third highest impact in “Applied Psychology” (as defined in the JCR¹) behind the Journal of Applied Psychology and Human Resource Management, respectively, and ahead of such stalwart I/O Psychology journals as Journal of Vocational Behavior, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes. Further, JOBM’s impact factor is linearly accelerated (r = .91) over the recent 5-year period. JOBM’s climb in this ranking also was noticed by NYU business professor William Starbuck (2005) who cited JOBM as a ‘Rising Star’ journal on his website report of journal citation trends.

JOBM is a high quality, high impact journal publishing research that makes a difference in the field of applied psychology. Its ranking of third in impact compares favorably to (or often is better than) other journals in the area that reputational surveys often identify as being “top journals” publishing high quality research (e.g., Zickar & Highhouse, 2001). Given both JOBM’s rapid rise over the past five years and the fact that reputational rankings are slow to change (Christenson & Sigelman, 1985), it should be expected that while the journal’s appearance in such subjective lists may emerge in time, the data show clearly that JOBM ranks among the best journals in applied psychology.

Table 1. Top 10 Journal in Applied Psychology Ranked According to 2003 Impact

Note: Data are taken from ISI Journal Citation Reports accessed January 10,2005.

Incalculable Impact
In applied fields such as OBM published research may not only inform future research, but may also inform professional practice. While not intending to downplay the journal's current citational success, for several reasons it may even be possible that the current high impact factor is an underestimate of JOBM’s real impact in applied psychology. In Organizational Behavior Management a significant proportion of the readers and contributors to JOBM are employed in consulting, healthcare or industry². These practitioners make use of the research published in JOBM, but do not normally include detailed reference lists and citations in their work products (a similar issue has been raised regarding the impact of medical journals on academicians versus practitioners by Saha, Saint, & Christakis, 2003). Thus, it appears that the Impact Factor significantly underestimates the scope and impact of research published in JOBM, and possibly other journals devoted to applied research as well.

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¹ - It is unclear why 2 journals in the field of counseling psychology are included in the “applied psychology” JCR category alongside journals in I/O Psychology when it seems that journals in counseling psychology may be more appropriately placed in the Clinical Psychology category.
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² - In this regard it is noteworthy that Behavioral Systems, Inc. JOBM started in 1977 and this consulting firm published the initial volumes before the journal began to be published by Haworth Press, an academic publisher (Dickinson, 2000). In volume 24 (2003) 44 editorial board members had a university listed as their affiliation and 20 had an affiliation other than a university, so a substantial representation of practitioners remains to this day.
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