Top journals in environmental economics

According to a forthcoming paper in Scientometrics, the top journal in environmental economics is the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. Yawn. Everyone knows that. The more interesting rankings are for the next couple of tiers of journals.

Here are the rankings according to 2006 Impact Factors:

1. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM)
2. Ecological Economics (EE)
3. American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE)
4. Resource and Energy Economics (REE)
5. Energy Journal (EJ)
6. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AJARE)
7. Land Economics (Land)
8. Environmental and Resource Economics (ERE)
9. Environment and Development Economics (EDE)
10. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (JARE)
11. Natural Resources Journal (NRJ)

Here are the rankings according to a survey of attendees of the 3rd World Congress:

1. JEEM
2. AJAE
3. LAND
4. ERE
5. REE
6. EE
7. EDE
8. EJ
9. JARE
10. NRJ
11. AJARE

I don't really have any serious quibbles with the 1-7 rankings according to the survey of attendees (i.e., raw impact factors are somewhat bogus*). In positions 8-11 and beyond I would need to include some journals in the List of Missing Journals. In the order that they appear in Table 5 of the Scientometrics paper I might like (for various reasons):

• Energy Economics
• Natural Resource Modeling
• Marine Resource Economics
• Energy Policy
• Journal of Environmental Management
• Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics
• Water Resources Research
• Agricultural and Resource Economics Review

*Some explanation:

• Papers in EE are heavily cited by papers that appear in EE. Most of these papers have little appeal outside of this community.
• Land and REE are published only four times each year. Fewer papers means fewer citations and lower impact factors.
• No offense to the Australians, but how does AJARE rank #6 in impact factors?

Comments

[Rob Elliott]

Interesting post. Apologies for a blatant stealing of your rankings but in defence I have provided some value added on publishing in environmental economics and the merits or these indices.

http://globalisation-and-the-environment.blogspot.com/2008/01/ranking-of-top-environmental-economics.html

The Ecological Economics debate is an interesting one. I still find it hard to believe the number 2 ranking for EE.

[John Whitehead]

Rob, No apologies necessary when you steal from a thief.

Your post is interesting, especially the part about ERE. To me, JEEM is the theoretical journal and all the empirical papers seem to wind up in ERE (and Land and REE)--At least in my research field, nonmarket valuation.

[CalDem]

Water Resources Research is a tricky one because its not a top Environmental Economics journal, but it is probably the top general interest water general and has high standards. its really in its own separate category. If I want something read by water people in general I would much rather have it in WRR than in any of the others, which nobody outside of economics reads.

[Will Wheeler]

Here's an interesting blog post (with a link to an interesting article) about Impact Factors, which I have always thought are not useful for subfields of economics: http://repec.org/blog/?p=28

On the EE issue, EE publishes monthly and publishes a whole lot of articles with, I imagine, a very short turnaround time. The two-year window used in these impact factors is probably biased against economics journals in favor of EE. Ecologists don't take nearly the time to review an article that economists do.