The end of an era: farewell to the Journal Quality list

Saying good-bye to the Journal Quality List after 26 years and 72 editions - why I started it, how it was received, why I stopped offering it, and what is next?

Anne-Wil Harzing - (updated Fri 8 May 2026 15:36)

I'd never thought I'd see the day that I would write a blogpost on this. But there we are... I have taken the rather difficult decision to step back from one of my many long-standing academic volunteering initiatives. In fact, it is the first major initiative that I ever started: the Journal Quality List.

The JQL was launched back in 2000, at a time where I was technicaly still an Early Career Researcher. Since then, I have published no less than 72 editions of this collation of a wide range of journal rankings. Over the years more than 20 different rankings have been included.

The latest ranking was published last month and will remain available: 72nd edition of the Journal Quality List online. As most of the major rankings included in the JQL were updated in 2024 or 2025, the JQL should retain its currency for a few more years.

Of course I couldn't really take this decision without giving the JQL a proper farewell. So this post offers an answer to the following four questions:

  • Why did I create the JQL?
  • How was the JQL received of the years?
  • Why did I decide to stop updating the JQL?
  • What's next in terms of free resources and support?

Why did I create the JQL?

As a general principle, I created the Journal Quality List for the same reason that I have offered freely available academic resources since 1999: I believe that as academics we all have a responsibility to contribute to the "academic commons". For more details see: Why I offered resources from early on in my career.

We can all do this in our own ways. Some of us take on major roles as (associate) editors, as active reviewers doing more than their fair share of reviewing, or as role holders in professional associations. I have taken on these roles myself in this past, and I am still a fairly active reviewer.

However, my main contribution to the academic commons has been through my website - including an active blog with over 500 postings - and my YouTube Channel: Harzing Academic Resources. You can find an overview of the resources on offer here: Working in academia.

The specific reasons for creating the JQL have been written up here and are discussed in the linked video:

How was the JQL received over the years?

Until it was eclipsed by the Publish or Perish software software in 2006, the JQL was the most popular feature of my budding resources website. Over its life-time, the JQL web page clocked up nearly a million page visits.

Of course not all of these visits will have resulted in downloads, and those downloading the JQL may not all have used it. But that's still a pretty impressive number for something that resulted directly from the frustration of an ECR member of a university research committee, especially given that the list only includes journals in Business & Economics.

The number of page visits also remained remarkably stable over the years. I only have yearly data from 2012 onwards, but in that period it fluctuated roughly between 30,000 and 50,000 page visits per year, with most years quite close to the average of 40,000 page visits [see graph]. The lower number of page visits in 2025 might signal a declining interest, or it might simply be caused by the fact that - unlike in all the other years - I didn't post an update in 2025.

Another way of measuring the reach and impact of the JQL is the number of times it is cited in research publications. Again, it comes a distant second to the Publish or Perish software that is mentioned in more than 11,000 publications [in Google Scholar] and officially cited in nearly 1,500 articles [in the Web of Science].

But with 323 Web of Science citations the JQL hase definitely impacted on our scholarly communications. The JQL began to be cited shortly after its launch in 2000 [see graph]. From 2006 onwards it acquired an average of 13 citations a year, increasing to 15 between 2011-2015, and 17-18 per year since 2016.

Why did I decide to stop updating the JQL?

I didn't take the decision to stop updating the JQL lightly. After all, it has accompanied me on most of my academic career to date. However, there were at least three reasons for doing so.

Updating was time-consuming and not very motivating

First, updating the JQL regularly took quite a bit of my time. In the early years I would update it 4-7 times a year; this frequency was reduced in later years to 2-3 times a year. Since 2018 I only updated the list 1-2 times a year by saving up all the updates for one big round.

However, it was also rather tedious work that required a very specific combination of a high level of conscientiousness and a lot of common sense knowledge. Although I had some help in the early years, I found that research assistants often made mistakes. This wasn't surprising as it was  very boring work, and they didn't yet have the intuitive knowledge of the various journals that I had. But this meant that I still had to spend considerable time checking their work.

It was also hard to stay motivated to continue to update the list. I could see that the JQL was both downloaded and used, and I did get the very occasional thank-you message. But I would typically only hear from users if something was wrong. So it was a bit of thankless task. The same is true for Publish or Perish to an even larger extent (see Please be polite and considerate). But at least I am using the software very regularly myself, whereas I had long stopped using the JQL. I had no need for it, as the ranking of the most relevant journals in my field was burned in my mind!

The various rankings increasingly converged and the number of them declined

Second, the rankings that were included in the JQL became more and more similar over time in terms of the journals they included and the ratings they assigned to the different journals. Obviously, I may have unwittingly contributed to this by juxtaposing the various lists in the JQL, making it is easier to compare them. This is quite ironic as the JQL was launched as a way to broaden choice for academics.

The number of rankings on offer also declined. Over the years, many individual university rankings were abolished. More and more universities adopted either the Australian ABDC list or the British Chartered ABS list. Others were no longer updated after an enthusiastic start, so their relevance became debatable and I had to remove them from the JQL.

In recent years, several meta-analyses have also appeared, combining all the rankings included in the JQL into an integrated ranking. Here is one of the latests efforts by Grigory Pishchulov and Rudolf Sinkovics. Several online services have also appeared, including most recently journal-rankings.com by Dom Santschi. This again led to further homogenisation of rankings, defeating the key purpose for launching the JQL, honouring the variety of scholarship. 

I became increasingly conflicted about providing a journal ranking

Most importantly though, I grew increasingly dissatisfied with the focus on journal rankings in our academic discipline. Even back in 2009, I already advocated a moratorium on journal rankings (see below). I therefore became conflicted about providing a journal ranking myself.

For a long time I eased my conscience. Rather than presenting "one list to rule them all", the JQL included a wide variety of rankings from different countries and research traditions. Moreover, even before this became mainstream through the DORA declaration, I had started advocating for the use of article-level indicators of impact. I even published articles that focused on this (see e.g. Proof over promise: a more inclusive ranking of academics). 

Even so, and especially with the launch of Positive Academia with Christa Sathish, I really felt that offering a journal ranking was no longer something that I could advocate. Hence, when - after a hiatus of nearly 1.5 year - time had really come to prepare the next update, I suddenly strongly felt that it should be the last.

What's next in terms of free resources and support?

Does this mean that I have given up on providing free resources and support for other academics? Absolutely not! I have done so from the start of my career (see video above and Why I offered resources from early on in my career), but have intensified these efforts in the past decade.

Here is a short chronology of my contributions to the "academic commons". Note that apart from the Journal Quality List, all these resources and organizations are still actively maintained and expanded. Hence, I recently took early retirement to fully focus on this work: Why did I take early retirement & farewell messages.

The 2000s

The 2000s were the era of resources for Inclusive research evaluation, coinciding with my employment at the University of Melbourne (Australia) and my roles in research (higher degrees) leadership. See also: My first identity – the capable research administrator.

2000: The free Journal Quality List, which made it to 72 versions in the 26 years it has been offered.

2006: The free Publish or Perish software, which - to date - has gone through eight major versions and hundreds of minor releases, courtesy of my husband David Adams. Here are some key resources that I created to help you get the most out of the software:

2007: Start of my white paper series with papers related to the Publish or Perish software:

These white papers were very popular. At their height of their popularity - in 2016 - the first two clocked up more than 24,000 and 32,000 page visits in a year, with the other two also reaching over 10,000 page visits in some years.

Over the years, their combined page visits reached nearly half a million. As such, they are probably my most-read publications, leaving my academic articles far behind 😃.

The 2010s

The 2010s were the era of providing support for female academics and ECRs. This largely coincided with my roles as Research Mentor and Staff Development Lead at Middlesex University (United Kingdom). See also: My second identity – the inclusive research mentor.

2014: Co-founding CYGNA (= SWAN = Supporting Women in Academia Network). Since co-founding CYGNA in 2014, we have organised no less than 70 plenary meetings - which included three anniversary celebrations, our latest at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Park CYGNA: 10 year anniversary 2014-2024 - as well as many more small-group meetings.

In 2023, we also expanded the coordination team (see: Cygna videos: expanding the team) and created a page with Frequently asked questions and Conference meet-ups. In 2024 this was joined by our International Women's Day contributions and a Teaching & Scholarship Research CYG, and in 2025 by a Career stage CYG, Cygna Writes, and Cygna Collaborations.

I have written up blogposts for most of the CYGNA meetings which include links to the presentations [if any] and related resources. You can find an overview of all these posts here: gender in academia.

2016: Launching the Harzing.com blog (see also: Harzing.com blog celebrates its 10-year anniversary), which has grown to more than 500 postings. In 2018, I also started to write up multi-part blogpost series, which I continued into the 2020s. My first multi-part blogpost series was about Internal vs. external promotion.

2010-2017: The 2010s were also the start of more frequent white paper writing. These white papers were a mix of papers dealing with small research projects on inclusive research evaluation (continuing from my work in the late 2000s) and a new strand of my work that provided advice for ECRs. Although never reaching the heights of my white papers on Google Scholar, they all acquired significant readership, with the first and last one being particularly popular.

 

The 2020s

In the early 2020s I continued the work I started in the 2000s and 2010s. However, the Covid-19 pandemic also led me to discover the joys of video-creation and editing (see also: Joy: website, blogging, and video creation). Moreover, especially since my early retirement in 2024, I have focused on setting up Positive Academia (led by Christa Sathish) and I redirected my writing to this area. See also: My third identity – the transformative emerita professor.

2020: The Covid-19 pandemic led to the launch of my YouTube channel which now includes more than 200 videos: Harzing Academic Resources. You can find a structured overview here: Working in academia

2021-2022: I continued my multi-part blogpost series covering several key aspects of academic careers.

2022-2023: After updating my multi-part blogpost series, I converted them into five career guides in the series Crafting your career in academia, which are available as Kindle and paperback books (see the end of this post).

2022-current: Positive Academia was initiated in 2022 as a LinkedIn hashtag (see #Positive academia and the images above). It became became an official movement in 2023 at the initiative of Christa Sathish, and morphed into a Community Interest Company in 2024 (see: Positive Academia).

2022-current: After a five-year hiatus, I started writing up white papers again in 2022, picking up pace after I retired in September 2024; a dozen white were papers published in the space of a single year!

All these white papers are in some way related to creating a more positive and inclusive academia. Although no longer reaching the heights of readership of my early white papers on Google Scholar in the 2000s, combined my white papers still reach more than 10,000 views a year.

2025: Defined a new research programme which gathers all my research on creating a more positive and inclusive academia: Transforming Academia [2009-current].

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Copyright © 2026 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Fri 8 May 2026 15:36

Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.

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