Abstract
The worldwide popularity of journal rankings has raised the question to what extent they can represent the best quality legal scholarship. The following analysis suggests current Chinese journal-ranking schemes do not. Existing Chinese journal rankings are based on quantitative indicators, a mere proxy for research quality. Besides, these journal rankings fail to enhance a fair competition between different types of law journals. Peer review used by elite law journals, does not solve the problem as long as there is no consensus on the substantive review criteria are adopted. Moreover, Chinese elite law journals are publishing too many in-house publications, raising doubts about the transparency of peer review processes which should filter out poor quality submissions from faculty members. The case of Chinese law journals addresses the importance of further trying to understand and tackle the challenges connected to journal ranking and peer reviews, which are problems shared by all journals.
Highlights
Ranking law journals is a recent phenomenon that is gaining influence in individual jurisdictions, such as the US,[1] the UK,[2] Australia,[3] and Israel,[4] and international legal academia.[5]
One major question is to what extent is it likely that the best quality legal scholarship is represented by journal-ranking schemes and elite law journals which are embedded in these schemes? This article is an attempt to answer this question by analyzing journal rankings in China where academic law journal publishing is alleged to be of poor quality
If journal rankings are unable to represent the highest quality legal scholarship available in China, what does this mean? Do we need to abolish rankings and turn to alternative research evaluation methods that rely less on metrics? To answer these questions, let us first look at the qualitative evaluation methods, including how journals try to incorporate quality criteria in their author guidelines and how these journals adhere to the quality criteria via review process
Summary
Ranking law journals is a recent phenomenon that is gaining influence in individual jurisdictions, such as the US,[1] the UK,[2] Australia,[3] and Israel,[4] and international legal academia.[5]. Evaluating Chinese Legal Scholarship in Journals to practitioners,[7] merely repeating existing knowledge[8] and producing too many pieces that will never be cited.[9] the elite law journals are thought to be the exception to this rule They are deemed to be the place where the very best articles are published. A majority of the editorial boards claim that they have adopted peer review, but peer review may be influenced by the phenomenon of guanxi, meaning that authors and editors affiliated with the same institution probably take advantage of their personal relationships to influence publishing decisions Another reason for concern is the rate of in-house publications.
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