What Do We Know About the Science of Science in Business and Economics? Insights From the Top 50 Journals,2008–2022

Abstract

We conduct a descriptive analysis of the performance of disciplines, journals, authors, and universities based on the number of publications in 50 business and economics journals represented in the Financial Times list (FT 50) from 2008 to 2022 using data from the Web of Science. We analyze more than 55,000 papers published by more than 54,000 unique authors during this period to document four sets of findings. First, our analysis suggests that Operations Management and Multidisciplinary areas experienced significant publication growth from 2008 to 2022, increasing their publication and citation share in FT 50 journals, even after accounting for the relative handicap in terms of number of journals in the FT 50 list. Second, the growth in publications of the Operations Management discipline is driven by significant growth in Production and Operations Management and Manufacturing and Service Operations Management. The Journal of Business Ethics is a notable outlier, it alone published nearly 10% of the papers published in the FT 50 list, more than the number of papers published by the five disciplines each: Accounting, Marketing, Multidisciplinary, Operations Management, and Information Systems. Third, we find that the most prolific authors in Management and Organizations, Operations Management, Economics, and Marketing had a higher number of publications during the 2008–2022 period than the most prolific authors of other disciplines. Finally, our analyses of the most prolific 150 worldwide universities published in the FT 50 list suggest that the list is dominated mostly by about a dozen countries that include North American countries (the USA and Canada), European countries (Netherlands, Germany, the UK, France, and Spain), China (including Hong Kong), Australia, and Singapore. We discuss the implications of our findings for ranking organizations, editors, academic associations, individual scientists, administrators, and policymakers.