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A Comment on “The Citation Impact of Feminist Economics ”

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13545700701716656

1466-4372

Frederic Lee,

Political Economy and Marxism

Abstract Abstract This essay is a comment on“The Citation Impact of Feminist Economics”by Frances Woolley, which appeared in Feminist Economics, Vol. 11, No. 3, November 2005. This contribution comments on Frances Woolley's recent Feminist Economics article, “The Citation Impact of Feminist Economics.” It points to two avenues through which Woolley's article could have better illuminated the extent of Feminist Economics' scholarly relationship with the communities of both heterodox and mainstream economists: first, she omits several important heterodox economic journals in her study, and second, she could have offered a more critical evaluation of mainstream journals and economists relative to Feminist Economics and feminist economists. This paper uses citation data drawn from ten heterodox and ten mainstream journals to identify and build on these gaps. Keywords: Feminist economicsheterodox economicsmethodologycitationsJEL Codes: B4, B5 Notes The absence of the Review of Radical Political Economics also mars Yana van der Muelen Rodgers's (1996 Rodgers, Yana van der Muelen. 1996. “The Prevalence of Gender Topics in US Economics Journals.”. Feminist Economics, 2(2): 129–135. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) study on the prevalence of gender topics in US economics journals between 1984 and 1994. Over that period, the Review of Radical Political Economics published two volumes dealing with women's issues and a total of fifty-one “gender topics,” which was eight more than published by the American Economics Review: Papers and Proceedings (forty-three) and one less than the seven general mainstream journals (fifty-two) included in the study. Thus, if Rodgers had included the Review of Radical Political Economics in her study, a somewhat different story about gender issues and feminist research would have emerged. Another way of illustrating the significance of Marxian – radical engagement with feminist economics is to see who cites Feminist Economics in which journals. Woolley (2005 Woolley, Frances. 2005. “The Citation Impact of Feminist Economics.”. Feminist Economics, 11(3): 85–106. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]: 90) lists sixteen people who cite the journal four or more times in other journals. With the inclusion of the four heterodox journals, two additional economists, Susan Himmelweit and M. V. Lee Badgett, can be added to the list. While not a large number, a list of influential feminist economists that does not include Himmelweit and Badgett is incomplete at best. The citation approach utilized here can be extended by the analogy of comparing exports, imports, and domestic production to evaluate the contribution and engagement Feminist Economics makes, relative to other heterodox journals, to heterodox economics (Frederic Lee 2006 Lee, Frederic S. 2006. “Ranking Heterodox Economic Journals and Departments: Suggested Methodologies.”. Unpublished paper [Google Scholar]). This result is not surprising given the critical view feminist economists have of mainstream research. Hence many of the mainstream journal citations arise from this critical engagement. The 2005 journal impact factor for Feminist Economics ranks it twentieth among economic journals; however, none of the citations were in mainstream economic journals used in this article, which suggests that the apparent impact of Feminist Economics on mainstream economics is overstated. In general, due to its methodology, which uses citations from all SSCI journals as opposed to just economic journals, it is not possible to use the journal impact factor to evaluate the impact of an economics journal on economics. Moreover, the journal impact factor is based on the number of cites in the base year (2005) to articles published in the previous two years (2003, 2004). If the period of time between a submission and its publication is over a year, which it is for most economic journals (and frequently more than two years), then the journal impact factor is an illusionary quantitative measurement of importance.