MAR or Management Accounting Research in some way is the biggest news in the two year impact factor of the SSCI as far as accounting journals go. It has broken out of the social science ghetto where according to one research study, 80% of SSCI journals have a two year impact factor of less than 1.9.  MAR’s impact factor is a robust 2.125.  Where did MAR come from and how did it break out of the SSCI norms????  Why, if you are an American are you unlikely to have read MAR and likely never seen it cited in the American 3 (at least recent articles)?

Examining MAR’s citation pattern is interesting.  It has, in the last two years, one cite combined in TAR, JAR, CAR, and JAE!  MAR’s claim to fame rests of a series of European based management journals with a strong bit of help from AOS. The Scand. Journal of Management, European Management Review and Accounting and Business Research are the big sources of citation.

This goes to my previous point, as more journals are “admitted” to the SSCI various clusters that would not be apparent in citations dominated by the American 3 and their associates will be seen and will influence the rankings of the journals more and more. But we have seen this before – the rise and crash and now small recovery of RAS is a lesson to those who would celebrate too early.  As recently as 2011 RAS (review of accounting studies) was above the 2 mark and had been for a handful of years starting in the early 2000’s!

Soon, why do we need to move to using the five year impact factor as our gauge (if we use one at all) for seeing the impact of journals.