Editorial

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1334
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015

Editorial

In my f‌irst editorial in March 2012 I mentioned that

CJAS needs your best work in order for it to be a source

of inf‌luence. The inf‌luence is often ascertained by the im-

pact it has among scholars as determined by its impact fac-

tor. Disciplinary journals pursue depth of knowledge in

what they report. Multidisciplinary journals such as CJAS

pursue breadth in what they offer—breadth in topics, ap-

proaches, samples, and locales. What I now understand is

that when it comes to impact factors, disciplinary journals

dominate. As an editor, I have to ask: should a journal pur-

sue impact factor improvement forsaking all other means of

inf‌luence?

We know that journals with a high impact factor attract

high quality research. It is the proverbial chicken or the egg

conundrum! People submit their best work to high impact

journals; they get cited, and that increases the impact factor!

I know from being in the business for over four decades that

publication in high impact journals elevates the status of

scholars among their peers and that tenure and promotion

decisions are affected by the impact factor of the journals

in which candidates publish. Although most institutions do

not have an explicit policy linking impact factor of journals

to promotion and tenure decisions, it is hard to deny that a

publication in a high impact journal makes an impression

on the decision makers. People talk of high quality publica-

tions appreciatively at tenure and promotion committee

meetings with the high impact journal taking precedence

over the published article. There is rarely discussion about

the actual citations the author’s paper has received. Granting

agencies are also inf‌luenced by the impact factor of the

journals in which the applicant has published. As recently

as last month, a reviewer of my research grant application

admitted to searching my Google prof‌ile to see the quality

of the journals in which I had published over my entire

career—not just the publications over the past f‌ive years

that the granting agency provided the reviewer—to help

make a decision on my grant application! Libraries around

the world track impact factor of journals to help make

decisions on which journal subscriptions to continue and

which to drop. It is a simple, elegant, seemingly objective,

and persuasive metric whose use has swelled beyond its

initial purpose.

The impact factor is also a vulnerable metric, prone to

manipulation. Journal editors, in a number of recent edito-

rials, have questioned its expansive use and vulnerability.

As I mentioned in an earlier editorial, publishing review

articles or meta-analyses on a regular basis will quickly raise

the impact factor as reviews are cited more often and over a

longer period of time. The impact factor is a ratio of number

of citations to number of articles published, both within a

specif‌ic time frame. While it may be diff‌icult to manipulate

the numerator, the denominator can be changed quite easily.

There are practices of questionable ethics mentioned in the

literature intended to boost the impact factor. The relative

merits of the two- and f‌ive-year impact factor are still de-

bated. The two are differentially inf‌luenced as much by the

nature of the articles published as by their substance. But

the landscape is changing. Administrative science is an

amalgamation of applied disciplines. Impact and inf‌luence

have different meaning. The Harvard Business Review with

an impact factor of 1.27 is arguably signif‌icantly more

inf‌luential than other management journals of much higher

impact factors. But the targets of inf‌luence are different.

Now there are competing measures of impact such as the

usage factor and the Y-factor, which are motivated by differ-

ent theories of impact. Articles are downloaded not merely

for purposes of citation in research; they are downloaded

to inf‌luence students in the classroom, decision makers in

organizations, and policy makers in public institutions. The

impact factor does not recognize any of the latter means of

inf‌luence. At CJAS, downloads and article citations appear

to have little correlation.

That said, journals are instruments of inf‌luence.

Journals curate manuscripts through a rigorous process to

sway authors and readers to use them in their research,

teaching, and practice. To that end, we offer in this issue a

meta-analysis that looks at network centrality, organizational

innovation, and performance. The results show that network

centrality has a strong inf‌luence on both innovation and per-

formance in developed institutional environments and in

knowledge intensive industries. In addition, network central-

ity impacts small and large organizations differentially, stim-

ulating innovation in small organizations and performance in

large organizations. The next paper is also about innovation,

and explores the interaction of internal political processes

and external competitive action in creating innovation in or-

ganizational forms in the sports sector. This is a longitudinal

comparative case study of cricket focusing on institutional

evolution and entrepreneurship. The next paper explores

the barriers to entry in the numerical computation market

and demonstrates that a platform strategy combined with

an open innovation process supported by a business

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

32: 141–142 (2015)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1334

Can J Adm Sci

32(3), 141–142 (2015)Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 141