The importance of ABS 2 journals in finance scholarship: Evidence from a bibliometric case study

Abstract

Recently among finance academic journals, it has become no longer the case that the highest externally rated journals are necessarily the most cited. Through the lens of a bibliometric case study, we highlight the integral contribution of ABS 2 articles to bibliometric-based conclusions. We demonstrate that selecting ABS2+ versus ABS3+ significantly changes results. Conceptually, we argue that as bibliometric analysis is citation based, a priori cutoffs for article inclusion should also be journal citation based, rather than external journal rankings based. Now that several ABS 2 journals are among the highest cited journals in finance, reconsiderations are needed.