The New Service Economy - KK-stiftelsen

The New Service Economy
search outlets has been sacrificed at the expense of quantity of publications.
Although there are a few articles that have appeared in high quality journals,
an overwhelming majority of the journal publications are in what many service
scholars would consider mid-level outlets. A recommendation made at
the mid-point review of the profile (in May 2005) was that the focus in future
dissemination of research should be on getting papers published in
higher quality journals (such as the Journal of Marketing); however, the
evidence presented in the self report did not suggest this strategy has been
successfully pursued. (Perhaps there are several projects in process that may
indeed end up in such publication outlets. As noted in the self-evaluation
report, the publication cycle tends to be longer in the higher quality journals.
However, the report merely indicates that two papers “aiming for top ranked
journals are in the review process.”)
Perhaps one reason for the relatively large number of mid-level publications
is that many of the research projects have been driven by students
(mini-researchers). Of course, several projects have been done by Ph.D.
students. However, even using Ph.D. students for such research can be a
double-edged sword. On one side, having a relatively large number of very
motivated students doing the research has led to many papers. (As we understand
it, the Ph.D. dissertation process in Sweden requires 4-6 research
papers that are published.) However, on the other side, research that is
driven by relatively inexperienced researchers (i.e., Ph.D. students, masters
students, bachelors students) is likely to have a much more difficult time
navigating the publication process in the top-tier journals (e.g., Journal of
Marketing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science). Thus, the “quantity vs. quality” issue in term of publications
may be due in large part to high use of Ph.D. students to do much of the
profile research.
On a related note, we believe a metric that merely identifies the number
of publications is not a sufficient measure of quality of the research being
produced from the profile. Metrics are also needed to determine the quality
of the publications. One means to do this might be for a ranking of the quality
of the journals where the publications are occurring. Although there are
certainly problems with this approach (e.g., poor articles get published in
“good” journals and good articles get published in “poor” journals), merely
tallying the quantity of publications does not provide a complete picture of
the overall quality of and contributions made by the research.
CTF appears to be using good methods to identify the relevance and improve
the quality of the research. From the Knowledge Foundation funded
research projects, CTF gave nearly 100 conference presentations. By attending
so many conferences CTF has done an excellent job of networking in
the international community of service research scholars. The presentations
made at these conferences also provide a good means to get feedback on
research, particularly in its early stages. Most of the conferences have re-
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