Monday, January 11, 2016

Ranking Legal Authors (not just academics): HeinOnline's "ScholarRank’s Top 250 Authors"


I teach in a midsize Irish law faculty. Everyone in the department has some sort of regular administrative post. Mine is the department's director of research. As such, I spend some real quality time worrying (and conferring with colleagues) about (relative) journal and faculty metrics. 

Many (if not most) American JDs -- current and former -- know about the Washington & Lee rankings for law journals. W&L's user friendly website is here: http://lawlib.wlu.edu/LJ/. W&L's rankings do not carry a lot of weight in Europe. Here the focus is more on peer reviewed law journals and journals which are cited in other peer reviewed journals. So European scholars interested in metrics look to the most recent reference of the Australia Research Council ("ARC") which ranked the "top" 1167 law journals worldwide. (You can find a copy of the most recent ARC rankings here: http://works.bepress.com/seth_barrett_tillman/237/ -- go to the bottom of the page.) The journals were not given individual rankings; rather, they were ranked in broad bands: A*, A, B, and C. Another ranking is Thomson Reuters' Journal Citation Reports (JCR). If you have access to Westlaw or other Thomson Reuters products, you may be able to see the JCR rankings for law (and other fields). There is also SCImago's Journal Rank indicator[1] (“SJR”). As I understand it, the SJR rankings were designed especially to facilitate cross-border rankings among Europe's many linguistic groups and journals. (Scopus website: http://www.scimagojr.com/ -- it uses SJR rankings.) Professor Leiter produces metrics on law faculties & individual faculty members. See, e.g., www.leiterrankings.com/faculty/2014_scholarlyimpact.shtml. 

Heads Up: If you are a law review editor, and you are not ranked by SJR or JCR or both, then you should apply for a ranking. It is free, and there is no downside (of which I am aware). 

I only recently came across HeinOnline's ranking of the top 250 law authors. It includes all authors, even if not academics, even if retired -- or dead. It is an interesting list. I have permission from HeinOnline to reproduce it. (See also http://home.heinonline.org/top_authors/) 

Seth

My prior post is here: Seth Barrett Tillman, Re: The Federalist Society conference, The New Reform Club (Jan. 7, 2016, 3:49 AM). 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethBTillman  ( @SethBTillman )





[1] The SJR rankings are also associated with Elsevier and Scopus.

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