by Jon Lackman | 30 June 2011 | Journals
CAA now refers to The Art Bulletin as “the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship,” and has done so for about a year it seems. This proposition seems worthy of debate. The leading publication? (Is that word “international” hedging the claim? Is “scholarship”? Or “art-historical”?) Elsewhere CAA has referred to The Art Bulletin as “the preeminent journal for art historians, curators, independent scholars, and educators” and “the leading quarterly journal in the English language of scholarship in all areas of art history and visual studies.”
Various outside bodies have tried to rank journals, using citation indexes or expert assessments or both. In 2008 The European Science Foundation gave 112 art-related journals its highest rating, including The Art Bulletin. Norway has its own list, which strikes me as idiosyncratic. The Art Bulletin, Art History, The Burlington Magazine, Leonardo and Oxford Art Journal all belong in the second rank, below 118 other journals?
Perhaps the most interesting rankings are those produced by Australia in 2010. It gave its highest ranking to seven “art theory and criticism” publications: The Art Bulletin, Art History: journal of the Association of Art Historians, Art Journal (also published by CAA), The Burlington Magazine, Ligeia: dossiers sur l’art, October, and Renaissance Quarterly. I must confess I haven’t read Ligeia in years (none of the major universities near me even carry it). Renaissance Quarterly is too general a publication to compare with The Art Bulletin. The other four seem worthy competitors to The Art Bulletin‘s claim for pre-eminence.
Why not call yourself “a leading journal”? It’s healthy for journals to compete and to take pride in their accomplishments. But to claim top status — without evidence or even argumentation — seems immodest and pointless. No matter how superlative any one art journal gets, it’s unlikely to become a true authority, nor should it.
I’m not sure “authority” is the issue, but, rather, the impeccable and rarely matched quality of scholarly research that lay behind the articles found in the Art Bulletin that lends considerable justification to the claim. Beyond that, it’s all marketeting lingo, i.e. hardly worthy of much intellectual fuss.
If you investigate the fine print on the Norwegian ranking, you’ll find that their “2″ publications are in fact ranked higher than the “1″ publications (“There are two levels: Ordinary publication channels (level 1) and highly prestigious publication channels (level 2),” from http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/kanaler/hjelp.do).
Furthermore, Gregory is right, it’s all marketing lingo. And the typically American tendency to appoint oneself “the leading,” “the best,” or “world champions.” Do Japanese baseball teams have a chance to qualify for the World Series? Of course not.
The Australian rankings were debated quite a bit in Australian universities. Not least because the way journals were ranked reflected how universities would assess the publication output of academics. A lot of the choices were considered odd, though one couldn’t really argue with most of the journals that were ranked in the top tier. The low rankings were also a bit off, specialist journals often ranked low as did those in languages other than English. The list is apparently being revised at the moment.
Thanks, Jon, for an interesting posting. I imagine the claim is largely marketing lingo (with a bit of serious aspirational thinking thrown in — saying it enough might make it true). But while I expect this sort of bluster from phone companies and potato chip makers, it is a bit disheartening to hear it from a journal that’s genuinely important.