In most scientific disciplines, a number of divergent and often highly specialized research areas are examined, which is reflected in substantial differences among journal scopes. Using the accounting literature as an example, we argue that this diversity in scopes should be considered when assessing journal influence. Concretely, we examine a citation-based structural influence measure for a sample of 41 accounting journals. Next, we identify sub-areas in the accounting literature and we explore journal influence in these sub-areas. Our results clearly demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between overall and sub-area influence. In addition, we show that sub-areas should be identified using a fuzzy clustering procedure.
['Geert van Campenhout', 'Tom van Caneghem', 'Steve Van Uytbergen']
A comparison of overall and sub-area journal influence: The case of the accounting literature