JIBS ranked in top 3 journals in the Business category in the latest Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports

In the latest Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports (JCR), released in June 2011, the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), which is edited by Professor John Cantwell, is ranked as one of the top three journals in the Business category in terms of Citation Impact factor. JIBS has consistently been included in the top 10 journals in the ranking for three years, but this latest ranking is an all-time high for JIBS, further consolidating its position as a top journal.

“Looking at the wide range of authors and readers that the journal has today, we have broadened the scope of people interested in the international business (IB) field,” says Professor Cantwell. “Our work is beginning to be cited more often outside the IB community.”

The Journal Citation Reports, an annual publication of Thomson Reuters, is the most widely used indicator when assessing the quality of peer-reviewed research journals. JIBS is included as well in both University of Texas at Dallas and the Financial Times 45 lists of top journals in business and management, which are also commonly used indicators of world-elite status for journals. JIBS is further ranked in the highest category of various recent major journal ranking lists from Europe and the Asia Pacific region contained in the Journal Quality Lists complied by Anne-Wil Harzing.

JIBS began in the late 1960’s at Georgia State University. From 1974, it began to be edited at RBS until 1984. The journal is owned by the Academy of International Business. Over the past 10 years JIBS’ reputation has grown substantially. “Two recent editors that helped this growth are Arie Lewin of Duke University and Lorraine Eden of Texas A&M University,” says Cantwell. Lewin helped JIBS get recognized by people with IB interests across more business school departments and disciplines, and Eden put in place much stronger administrative structures. These two took JIBS to a new level, making it more diverse and more efficient than it used to be.

“Our 3rd place ranking represents more than an achievement for an Academy that is relatively small when compared to the journals of other top professional organizations on the list,” says Professor Cantwell. “And the fact that we have been consistently ranked among the top ten for the past three years shows how the quality work we are doing has been sustained, and is no flash in the pan.”

JIBS has been edited by Professor John Cantwell in the Rutgers Business School Department of Management and Global Business since July 2010. Professor Cantwell has been responsible for all new submissions to the journal since July 1, 2010, and assumed all the duties of Editor-in-Chief on January 1, 2011. Pallavi Shukla, a PhD student in the International Business Program is the JIBS Editorial Assistant in RBS. With the support of the RBS Dean’s Office, an editorial office for the journal has been set up on the 10th floor of the RBS building in Newark.

About Professor Cantwell

Dr. Cantwell came to Rutgers as Professor of International Business in 2002. Coming from a Chair in International Economics at the University of Reading in the UK, he has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", the University of the Social Sciences, Toulouse, and the University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna. He is the author of Technological Innovation and Multinational Corporations (Basil Blackwell, 1989), which book helped to launch a new literature on multinational companies and international networks for technology creation, beyond merely international technology transfer, and which alone has a cumulative peer reviewed social science journal citation count of well over 250. Altogether, John Cantwell has published eleven books, over 60 articles in refereed academic journals, and over 75 chapters in edited collections.

Dr. Cantwell is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Business Studies from 2011-13. He was the President of the European International Business Academy (EIBA) in 1992, and in 2001 he was elected as one of four EIBA Founding Fellows. He served as the first Secretary of the EIBA Fellows from 2002-07. In 2005 he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB), and he was Vice President of the AIB in 2006-08, when he was responsible for the program of the annual conference of the AIB held in Milan in 2008. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the UK. Professor Cantwell was also an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization from 2002-10.