Referee quality and article citations: a case study of a finance journal

Bonnett, J. Matthew; Siganos, Antonios

Abstract

As a result of the open science movement, we take advantage of one of the few journals in business studies, the Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), which between 2009 and 2021 named some of their referees. This allows us to produce a novel hand-collected data set to explore the extent to which referee quality matters in identifying articles that will receive strong future citations. We find that prominent academics are more likely to identify articles that will exhibit a high number of citations. This relationship is most pronounced among referees who are in a relatively mature stage in their careers. These results indicate that high-quality researchers, especially those in a relatively mature stage, are more likely to identify the potential of an article. To maximize future citations, editors thus need to consider the research publication record of the referees when making their selections. Overall, we provide insights which are of interest and relevance across higher education research.

Citation

Bonnett, J. M., & Siganos, A. (online). Referee quality and article citations: a case study of a finance journal. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2024.2406389

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 13, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Sep 20, 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 17, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 20, 2024
• Journal: Studies in Higher Education
• Print ISSN: 0307-5079
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-174X
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2024.2406389
• Keywords: Open Science; Peer Reviewing; Named Referees; Referee quality; Citations