From: John Sack <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed15 Oct 2014 15:56:35 -0700

(I am submitting this reply on behalf of Anurag Acharya
  - John Sack )

Joseph Esposito writes:

>Not persuasive.  The number of articles continues to grow, the number
>of slots in the so-called elite journals is pretty much constant.

ANURAG:  Let me try again.

As mentioned in the abstract and in the methods section, we picked a
fixed & relatively low number of top-cited articles -- 1000 per
category. The top 10 journals in a category, as a group, publish more
than 1000 articles a year. So, it is not a matter of the size of the
pot growing and the top-cited journals not growing. Rather, there are
a fixed number of slots every year in each category and more of the
slots each year are now being filled by articles published in
non-elite journals.

I would also like to point out that the results indicate that the
elite journals still
publish a substantial fraction of high-impact articles. They are still
elite. But there is a clear and significant shift in the distribution
and it occurs across a diverse range of research fields.

cheers,
anurag


On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 3:34 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 21:18:06 -0400
>
> Not persuasive.  The number of articles continues to grow, the number
> of slots in the so-called elite journals is pretty much constant.  If
> all the seats are taken at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, do we expect
> parents to tell their kids not to go to college at all?  Would we
> expect that someone who attends the U. of Michigan or Villanova has no
> economic contribution to make?  The question about this article is why
> anyone thinks it is newsworthy.  Where was it published again?
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 8:17 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > From: John Sack <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 05:49:53 -0700
> >
> > I am forwarding this response on behalf of Anurag Acharya at Google
> >
> > John Sack
> > Founding Director
> > HighWire Press
> >
> > -----
> >
> > I would like to clarify couple of things about our paper. My comments
> > are inline below,
> >
> > cheers,
> > anurag
> >
> > Corey Murata writes:
> >
> > The basic flaw in the research is centered around how they identify
> > 'elite journals.'
> >
> > First, they are using incredibly broad disciplinary groupings from
> > Google Scholar Metrics:
> >
> > http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues
> >
> > Economics, for example is lumped in with Business and Management, and
> > if you look at the top ten journals in that broad group the only
> > management journal is MIS Quarterly, all the rest are Economics and
> > Finance.
> >
> > [[ANURAG]] As described in the Methods section of the paper, elite
> > journals are identified  for each of the 261 specific subject
> > categories (eg Immunology or Accounting & Taxation or Gender Studies
> > or Finance) and NOT at the level of broad areas (eg Health & Medical
> > Sciences or Business, Economics & Management).
> >
> > To get an overview of changes within each broad area, we determined
> > the median, the 25th, and the 75th percentile subject categories
> > within each area. We then picked the median subject category in each
> > broad area as the representative for the area and plotted data for all
> > three of median/25th-percentile/75th-percentile categories in the
> > per-area graphs in Figure 2. The median/25th/75th percentile
> > categories were computed afresh for every year to ensure that they
> > remain representative of the area (details are in the Methods
> > section).
> >
> > Second, they ignore the increase in the number and specialization of
> > journals over the period of the study. This increasing availability of
> > journals that are 'core' to a sub-disciplinary group of scholars would
> > naturally lead to more high-quality articles being published outside
> > of the 'elite' journals as defined by the authors of this paper. The
> > increasing number of journals also means that the ten 'elite' journals
> > becomes a progressively smaller percentage of the total scholarly
> > output over time.
> >
> > [[ANURAG]] As mentioned above, the list of elite journals was computed
> > separately for each of the 261 specific subject categories. Which
> > means there are over 2500 journals that are considered elite each
> > year. As mentioned in the Methods section, the list of elite (and
> > non-elite) journals for each subject category was recomputed for each
> > year. So shifts in the focus of a subject category or new journals
> > that become a part of the "core" set would be reflected.
> >
> > The Methods section of the paper also mentions that the number of
> > articles considered top-cited each year in a subject category was
> > fixed at 1000. Therefore, growth in the total number of articles
> > published isn't a significant factor.  The top ten journals in a
> > subject category, as a group, publish more than 1000 articles per
> > year.