Chronicle: The Futility of Ranking Academic Journals

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 August 2011
by Ellen Hazelkorn, author of Rankings and the Reshaping of Higher Education: The Battle for World-Class Excellence

Hazelkorn poses this question:

While academe has questioned the trend away from curiosity driven and towards application-focused research, there is a responsibility on publicly-financed research(ers). Yet, this is not what ranking journals measures. In other words, using policy’s own objectives, ranking journals simply measures what one academic has written and the other has read rather than its impact and benefit on/for society. Where is the evidence the research is helping resolve society’s major challenges or benefit students?

Full text of the article is here.