Editorial Board Representation: An Alternative Method for Ranking Real Estate Programs

Abstract. This paper provides a ranking of the academic standing of real estate programs based upon faculty representation to the editorial boards of leading core real estate journals for the years 1998 and 2003 The inquiry shows that faculty affiliated with a relatively small assemblage of institutions dominates editorial board representation. The close attention also shows by comparisons that greatest in quantity of the institutions that are highly ranked for editorial board representation are also highly ranked in previous studies of research productivity based upon publications. By focusing only upon journals that are universally recognized to be the top journals in real estate, editorial board membership as a ranking process clearly saves time and can be easily done at regular intervals.

Introduction

The reported accrues of studies that rank the academic standing of real estate programs are of continual interest to the membership of the real estate discipline. The springs provide programs with comparative feedback as a basis for monitoring their progres and relative status. In particular, the prestige associated with achievement of the highest ranks can evidence valuable to a program in bounds of attracting high quality learners excellent faculty, increased budget allocations and externally generated financial support.

Rankings for real estate programs can be disentangleed by applying different methods similar as counting the number of published articles by the agency of faculty, determining the number of citations to published research and conducting overlooks to measure peer ratings or perceived quality. The inherent subjectivity of the view method places it at a disadvantage relative to the more objective manners The methods that involve enumerates of published articles or citation analysis gain objectivity, on the contrary typically involve an elaborate and tedious proces for data collection. Therefore, an alternative course for ranking programs has evolv that is based upon examining faculty representation on the editorial boards of leading journals. Considerable power above a discipline is vested in editorial board members. Their decisions direction the type of research that is published, determine the succes of academicians as scholars and sustain a journal's reputation for quality. Thus, selection to a position upon an editorial board for a leading journal is a distinct honor for a faculty member, as well as the member's university and department.

Studies of editorial board representation have been used to rank programs in accounting (Mittermaier, 1991; and Volkan, Colley and Boone 1993) economics (Gibbons and Fish, 1991) finance (Kaufman 1984; and Chan and Fok 2003) marketing (Kurtz and Boone 1988) statistics (Gibbons, 1990) and transportation (Boone Gibson and Kurtz 1988) A multidisciplinary application of mind by Trieschmann, Dennis, Northcraft and Niemi (2000) adds to the validity and relevance of editorial board representation as a basis for ranking academic standing. In their research the authors report a significant positive correlation between the number of journal editorships held by dint of business school faculty and the rankings of business seminarys as published annually in Business Week and U of recent origins and World Report.

Gibbons and Fish (1991) Mittermaier (1991) and Volkan, Colley and Boone (1993) emphasize that a ranking based upon editorial board representation reflects the one and the other the quality of faculties and their visibility relative to other institutions, on the other hand is much easier and faster to obtain than rankings based upon other criteria. Recognizing this important advantage, the object of the present study is to apply the editorial board means to the real estate discipline as a basis for identifying the top ranked programs and to facilitate comparison with previous studies based upon alternative ranking methods. However, it should be noted that a ranking for editorial board representation is primarily a measure of academic reputation for scholarship and research as oppos to teaching or service/industry reputation.

Research Method

This application of mind examines faculty representation on editorial boards of leading core real estate journals as a basis to comparatively rank real estate programs. Editorial board memberships for a plant of real estate journals are examined for the first issue of each journal for 1998 and 2003 Prior studies of editorial board representation through Boone, Gibson and Kurtz (1988) Gibbons (1990) Gibbons and Fish (1991) and Volkan, Colley and Boone (1993) use a single year for data collection. However, above time changes occur in the composition of editorial boards. Therefore, sum of two units observation points, 1998 and 2003 are used as the basis to bring together editorial board membership data for the common study. The year 1998 provides a five-year interval to allow for editorial board changes and at the same time detains the data reasonably recent enough to make the flows meaningful.

An essential element for a investigation based on editorial board membership data is the identification of an appropriate core collection of leading real estate journals. In their close attention to determine rankings for accounting programs upon the basis of editorial board representation, Volkan, Colley and Boone (1993) conclud that it is not necessary to use a large number of journals. They compared the editorial board representation rankings of accounting programs based upon a group of fifty-four accounting journals with rankings based upon a small subset of the assemblage consisting of only the top journals in accounting. The be the effect of their comparative analysis indicates that the use of a data source of a relatively not many top academic journals yields essentially the same result as using a large number of journals. Therefore, in correspondence with the finding reported by means of Volkan et al., the common study is based on the top three leading core journals as identified in the real estate journal quality rating studies by the agency of Webb and Albert (1995), Diaz, Black and Rabianski (1996) Redman, Manakyan and Tanner (1998 1999) and Gibler and Ziobrowski (2002) and also in the real estate authorship studies by means of Clauretie and Daneshvary (1993), Ziobrowski and Gibler (2000) and Dombrow and Turnbull (2002) These three journals are Real Estate Economics (REE) the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics (JREFE) and the Journal of Real Estate Research (JRER) Despite a high rating in a certain number of of the prior journal quality studies, the Journal of Urban Economics, Land Economics, Journal of Housing Economics, Journal of Finance and Journal of Financial Economics were exclud from the research Although these journals are considered to be prestigious exits for published research in real estate, according to Clauretie and Daneshvary (1993) and Dombrow and Turnbull (2002) none of the aforementioned journals are regarded as a core real estate journal primarily devot to the publication of real estate studies.