BY GRETA L. POLITES AND
RICHARD T. WATSON
THE CENTRALITY AND
PRESTIGE OF CACM
Journal rankings identify the most respected publications in a field, and
can influence which sources to read to remain current, as well as which
journals to target when publishing. Ranking studies also help track the
progress of the field, identifying core journals and research topics, and
tracking changes in these topics and perceptions over time. Past journal
ranking studies have consistently found Communications of the ACM
(CACM) to be very highly respected within the IS discipline. However,
the exact nature of its relationships to other IS journals has not been
thoroughly examined. In this article, we report a social network analysis (SNA) of 120 journals for the purpose of exploring in detail CACM’s
position within the IS journal network.