A citation-based ranking of German-speaking researchers in business administration with data of Google Scholar

Abstract

Rankings of academics can be constructed in two different ways, either based on journal rankings or based on citations. Although citation-based rankings promise some fundamental advantages they are still not common in German-speaking business administration. However, the choice of the underlying database is crucial. This article argues that for German-speaking researchers in business administration (as an example for a non-English speaking scientific community in the social sciences) Google Scholar is an appropriate database. Unfortunately, it contains some structural errors that require diligent corrections. With that in mind, all 1572 members of the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB) are ranked according to the citations of their recent publications (2005–2009). The results are compared to those of the Handelsblatt-BWL-Ranking which is the most prominent journal-based ranking of German-speaking academics in this discipline. It becomes clear that differences in method lead to different results.