Library and Information Science

The purpose of this paper is to examine the selection of core journals of non-scientific journals contained in JOINT (the index for business journals in Japan) and also to study the selection measures and methods, especially, the journal ranking methods based on circulation and advertisement rates.

In the survey, the following three methods which reflect different selection measures are used to select core journals in three industry fields: “Communication”, “Auto-manufacturing” and “Transportation”. (1) Productivitiy of journals articles: reflecting the specialty of journals concerning the industry. (2) Circuration of journals: reflecting the influence of journals and the extent of dissemination of the information in the journals. (3) Core author’s contribution: reflecting the influence of opinion-leaders in the industry, which appearing in the advertisement rates of journals.

The journal rankings of the above-mentioned three methods are synthesized and evaluated by subject specialists.

As a result, the high ranked journals in the synthesized rankings almost correspond to the judgement of the subject specialists in the fields of “Communication” and “Auto-manufacturing”. This shows that the methods used in the survey are effective as the quantitative methods for selecting core journals in particular industry fields. Furthermore, the synthesized journal rankings (1), (2) and (3) show the higher effect than the journal rankings by the method (1) solely or the synthesis of the methods (1) and (3). This fact may indicate that the journal ranking methods based on circulation and advertisement rates are effective in selecting core journals of non-scientific journals in particular industry fields in JOINT.