The Dramatic Rise of the New Society Journals in Economics
2025-06-13
We produce updated rankings of economics journals based on established and new methodologies, and use these rankings to document the spectacular rise of the new society journals in economics. We show that, while several factors (editor reputations, editor experience, citations from parent journals and the number of articles published) help determine these journals’ impact factors, none help explain why the new journals outperform natural comparison journals. However, soliciting top authors connected to the editors can explain their outperformance. We also consider factors such as fast turnaround times, the transfer of referee reports and associations leveraging their reputations.