A group decision support approach to evaluating journals

One of the most important decisions made in academic institutions, research organizations, and government agencies is the grading or ranking of journals for their academic values. Current methods for evaluating journals use either a subjective (e.g., experts' judgments on journals) or objective approach (e.g., impact factors of journals), or an informal mix of the two. This paper presents a formal procedure that integrates objective and subjective judgments to provide a comprehensive method. The procedure is based on a fuzzy set approach that deals with the imprecise and missing information inherent in the evaluation process. The system was tested in Hong Kong in an assessment of faculty research productivity. Similar assessments exist in the UK, Singapore, and other countries. The proposed model can also be used for similar decisions that involve subjective and objective information. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.