The Journal of Risk and Insurance: Authors of Influence

• Author: Jianren Xu,Steven W. Pottier,Joshua D. Frederick
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rmir.12089
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Date: 01 December 2017

Risk Management and Insurance Review

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Risk Management and Insurance Review, 2017, Vol.20, No. 3, 339-362

DOI: 10.1111/rmir.12089

FEATURE ARTICLE

THE JOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE:AUTHORS

OF INFLUENCE

Steven W. Pottier

Jianren Xu

Joshua D. Frederick

ABSTRACT

The purpose of our study is to identify the most influential authors who pub-

lished in the Journal of Risk and Insurance (JRI) between 1989 and 2010 using

citations as our primary indicator of author influence. Extant citation studies

concerning the JRI are at the journal level rather than the author level or they

examine citations appearing in JRI articles rather than citations to JRI articles.

Our study examines articles published in the JRI from 1989 to 2010 and the

citations to these articles from 1989 to 2014 reported in Thomson Reuters Web of

Science (WOS). This approach is consistent with the method used by WOS to

calculate journal impact factors. Our study presents a variety of author produc-

tivity measures based on JRI publication activity and citations to JRI articles.

The top 50 authors are ranked and identified for each metric.

INTRODUCTION

The Journal of Risk and Insurance (JRI) is widely considered the premier scholarly jour-

nal specializing in risk and insurance research (Weiss and Qiu, 2008; Chan and Liano,

2009). Risk management and insurance (RMI) faculty are often evaluated and bench-

marked relative to other RMI faculty, or peers, based on the quality and quantity of

their research publications and their research impact as measured by citations to their

published research. A commonly used metric of journal quality is listing of the journal in

Thomson Reuters Web of ScienceC

(WOS) and the journal impact factor based on citations

in WOS-listed journals.1The use of the WOS listing status, WOS journal impact factors,

publication activity, and citation count in faculty annual performance reviews, tenure

Steven W. Pottier is at Department of Insurance, Legal Studies, and Real Estate, Terry College of

Business, University of Georgia, Athens, GA; email: spottier@uga.edu. Jianren Xu is at Depart-

ment of Finance, Insurance, Real Estate and Law,College of Business, University of North Texas,

1155 Union Circle #305339, Denton, TX 76203-5017; email: jianren.xu@unt.edu. Joshua D. Fred-

erick is at Department of Insurance, Legal Studies, and Real Estate, Terry College of Business,

University of Georgia, Athens, GA; email: jdrakefrederick@gmail.com.

1The Journal Citation Report (JCR) is an annual publication of Thomson Reuters integrated with the

WOS that reports journal impact factors based on citations in the a particular JCR year based

on articles published in said journal in a prior time period, currently either the most recent 2

or 5 years. The journal impact factor is the number of citations in the JCR year divided by the

number of articles in the publication period (2 or 5 years), and represents the average number

of citations (per article) in the JCR year to articles published in the publication period. The WOS

339

340 RISK MANAGEMENT AND INSURANCE REVIEW

and promotion decisions, and for research grants, reflects a desire for objectively verifi-

able and independent measures to support decisions critical to a faculty member’s career

progression. Additionally, author-specific measures aid an individual faculty member in

gauging his relative standing, performance, and progress with respectto his professional

goals.

The purpose of our study is to identify the most influential authors who published in

the JRI from 1989 to 2010. We use author productivity to gauge author influence, and

define author productivity according to publication and citation counts. Our produc-

tivity measures are in relation to other authors who published in the JRI.Wearethe

first to examine citations to JRI articles at the author level rather than the journal level.

In addition, our citation analysis covers a longer time period than any existing study

of citations to JRI articles. We do not include self-citations in our study because such

citations typically are not counted when comparing scholars based on citations. We see

this as a logical extension of prior work that has focused on citations at the journal

level (Colquitt et al., 2009) or focused on JRI publication counts, but not citations at the

author level (Weiss and Qiu, 2008). In contrast to other citation studies related to risk

and insurance (discussed more below), our study is comprehensive in the sense that all

citations appearing in WOS-listed journals are included, and these are the journals that

are used to calculate the impact factors officially recognized by WOS-listed journals.2

Further, our citation analysis is more consistent with the calculation of journal impact

factors than other citation analysis studies of insurance journals because we count cita-

tions related to articles published in our sample period rather than citations appearing

in journals in a particular sample period.3The latter approach results in citation counts

related to an undefined publication period, which is probably why WOS journal im-

pact factors follow the former approach. Two other important advantages of counting

citations to JRI articles that appear in WOS journals only are: first, we do not have to

choose which among the large number of non-WOS journals to include for purposes of

counting citations to JRI articles; and second, as presence in the WOS controls for journal

quality to some extent, interpretation of author rankings based on citation counts is more

straightforward.4

includes the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) citation database and Science Citation Index

Expanded (SCIE) citation database.

2Journals, journal editors, and scholars commonly refer to Thomson Reuters Web of

ScienceC

(or Journal Citation Report) impact factors, see the JRI homepage, for example,

http://journalofriskandinsurance.smeal.psu.edu/. The Journal Citation Report impact factors

are de facto the official journal impact factors for journals listed therein.

3We count citations that appear in the publication sample period (1989–2010) and up through

4 years following the publication sample period (2011–2014). Thus, our citation sample period

is 4 years longer than our publication sample period. We choose this approach to allow more

recent publications to garner more citations. This is not identical to the calculation of WOS

impact factors, which are based on citations 2 or 5 years following publication date. In our

study, the upper limit on the time between an article publication year and citation year is 25

(i.e., 1989–2014). As our citation analysis is at the author level rather than the journal level, and

more prolific authors published multiple articles during the publication sample period, there is

not any direct analogue to WOS journal impact factors at the author level.

4For instance, if one were to decide to include non-WOS journals, which non-WOS journals

should be included for purposes of counting citations to JRI articles and what criteria should