Benchmarking publication metrics for Indian business researchers

Unveiling research productivity of premier IIMs of India (2010–2021)

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the research productivity in terms of publications count of the top four premiers Indian Institute of Management (IIM) institutions and to explore the current research trends.

Design/methodology/approach

Bibliometric techniques were employed to assess the performance in terms of research productivity of authors affiliated with IIMs. The Elsevier Scopus database was selected as a tool to extract the prospective publications data limiting the time frame for 2010–2021. The IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Bangalore, IIM-Calcutta and IIM-Lucknow have been selected for the study. The harvested data were analyzed by using the standard bibliometric indicators and scientometric parameters to measure the research landscape such as average growth rate, compound average growth rate, relative growth rate, doubling time, degree of collaboration, collaborative index, collaborative coefficient and modified collaborative coefficient. VOSviewer 1.6.17, BibExcel and Microsoft Excel were used for data analysis and visualization.

Findings

The research productivity of selected four IIMs has shown an upward trend during the study period from 2010–2021 and accrued 4,397 publications with an average of 366 publications per year. The authorship patterns demonstrate the collaborative trends as most of the publications were produced by the multiple-authors (81.03%). IIM-Ahmedabad has produced the maximum number of publications (32.20%). The research productivity of IIMs has come out in collaboration with the 125 nations across the world and the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany and China are the front runners with IIMs in the collaborative network. The high magnitude and density of collaboration are evident from the calculated mean values of the degree of collaboration (0.82). The mean values of the collaborative index (2.64), collaborative coefficient (0.51) and modified collaborative coefficient (0.51) demonstrated a positive trend, but indicate the fluctuation in the collaborative pattern as time proceeds.

Research limitations/implications

The study is limited to the publications data indexed in the Scopus database, therefore the outcome may not be generalized across other databases available in the public domain like Web of Science (WoS), PubMed, Dimensions and Google Scholars.

Practical implications

The findings of the study may aid academics and library professionals in identifying research trends, collaboration networks and evaluating other academic and research institutions by using the current advancement in data analysis.

Originality/value

The present study is the first effort to evaluate the research productivity of IIMs. The expanding literature will make an important contribution to identifying patterns and evaluating current research trends on a worldwide scale.

Decarbonization strategy of businesses, stock return performance and investment styles: a systematic review

Purpose

This paper aims to provide a systematic review of the research focusing on the decarbonization strategy of businesses, stock return performance, and investment styles.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper utilizes bibliometric methods and content analysis to present a broad overview of the research on the association between decarbonization strategies in businesses and financial performance in the last few decades. The final dataset contains 272 records published between 2001 and early 2021, available in the Web of Science (WoS) database.

Findings

The authors find a relatively small number of publications before 2010 and the research focus increases only after 2016. There exists limited knowledge on the links between climate change strategies and firm performance till date. The top management journals have also failed to respond to the importance of decarbonization strategies in firms and their relationship with stock returns and investment styles. Furthermore, there is a limited indication of publications from ecology and the environmental sciences, in general, being included or cited by the business and management research studies, thus highlighting weak network linkages between the two fields.

Research limitations/implications

The study contributes to the literature on decarbonization strategies of businesses, and the strategies' relation with firm performance by consolidating the extant research and thus finding the research gaps and research areas that require further investigation.

Practical implications

For the industry professionals, this research provides a comprehensive repository of articles on incorporating decarbonization strategies in industry professionals' decisions on improving firm performance.

Originality/value

This paper examines the history and development of themes, related to firms' emission mitigation strategies, firm performance and investment styles, across the journal articles in the WoS database published from 2001 to early 2021. In addition, the authors highlight research directions and the need for research on sustainable strategies in businesses, stock return, and investment styles.

Building a yardstick–a benchmark framework for assessing higher education management institutions

Purpose

Higher education management institutions play a vibrant role in imparting managerial skills to the students to face the corporate world. Performance evaluation of such institutions is mandate to ensure the outcome quality. To establish this, the present research explored the critical performance indicators of management institutions using the balanced scorecard (BSC) approach.

Design/methodology/approach

This research explored the critical performance indicators of public, private and standalone management institutions in India. Data were collected from the representative sample of all the stakeholders in those management institutions. A specific vision was created and a systematic procedure was employed to arrive at the objectives, measures and metrics of the scorecard specific to the vision. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to perform analysis on the collected data. For the objectives and measures that evolved from confirmatory factor analysis, metrics were formulated based on the expert opinion.

Findings

The study resulted in 16 objectives, 46 measures and 54 metrics encompassing all the four perspectives of BSC. This paper has contributed a concrete, concise, comprehensive and context specific framework.

Research limitations/implications

The nature of the BSC framework paves the way for continuous assessment and eventually helps the institutions to attain sustainable growth. This research contributes to the literature of balanced scorecard and also to the performance assessment of the management institutions.

Originality/value

BSC-based benchmarking is a unique contribution to the academia of management education to precisely measure the performance of institutions. The model comprehensively includes the indicators from all the perspectives of stakeholders in terms of objectives, measures and metrics, thus proposing a holistic assessment.

Black swan: bibliometric analysis and development of research agenda

Purpose

There has been an increasing interest amongst the researchers to work and explore, “Black Swan” events which are not well studied. However, the “Black Swan” events hold an eminent relevance amongst academicians and practitioners. The present study offers nuanced understanding of “Black Swan” events.

Design/methodology/approach

We undertook an extensive bibliometric analysis of the extant literature using “Black Swan” as guiding keyword with the help of SCOPUS database.

Findings

The search for articles only yielded 59 articles. Our analyses highlight the prominent works, authors and journals. Further, this study reveal the research gaps that may help guide future scholars interested in “Black Swan” events to examine in different context.

Research limitations/implications

The current study develops a research agenda and offers numerous research directions. Research on “Black Swan” events can be apprehended at three different stages – pre-black swan event, about black swan event and post-black swan event with identified sub-themes.

Originality/value

This paper is the pioneer research work to dedicatedly analyse the existing set of literature with “Black Swan”.

Bibliometric analysis of a controversial paper on predatory publishing

Purpose

In 2017, one study (Derek Pyne; Journal of Scholarly Publishing; DOI: 10.3138/jsp.48.3.137; University of Toronto Press) in the “predatory” publishing literature attracted global media attention. Now, over three years, according to adjusted Google Scholar data, with 53 citations (34 in Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science), that paper became that author's most cited paper, accounting for one-third of his Google Scholar citations.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors conducted a bibliometric analysis of the authors who cited that paper.

Findings

We found that out of the 39 English peer-reviewed journal papers, 11 papers (28%) critically assessed Pyne's findings, some of which even refuted those findings. The 2019 citations of the Pyne (2017) paper caused a 43% increase in the Journal of Scholarly Publishing 2019 Journal Impact Factor, which was 0.956, and a 7.7% increase in the 2019 CiteScore.

Originality/value

The authors are of the opinion that scholars and numerous media that cited the Pyne (2017) paper were unaware of its flawed findings.