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Cited by 420

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five

Open access
Heckman, James J., Moktan, Sidharth·2020·Journal of Economic Literature
DOI 10.1257/jel.20191574
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Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between placement of publications in top five (T5) journals and receipt of tenure in academic economics departments. Analyzing the job histories of tenure–track economists hired by the top 35 US economics departments, we find that T5 publications have a powerful influence on tenure decisions and rates of transition to tenure. A survey of the perceptions of young economists supports the formal statistical analysis. Pursuit of T5 publications has become the obsession of the next generation of economists. However, the T5 screen is far from reliable. A substantial share of influential publications appear in non-T5 outlets. Reliance on the T5 to screen talent incentivizes careerism over creativity.( JEL A14, I23, J44, J62)

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Metadata

Authors
Heckman, J. J., & Moktan, S.
Venue
Journal of Economic Literature
Publisher
American Economic Association
Published
2020-06-01
Volume
58
Issue
2
Pages
419-470
ISSN
0022-0515 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1257/jel.20191574
OpenAlex
W2894029326
Cited by
420
References
24
FWCI
35.04
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1257/jel.20191574
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Heckman, J. J., & Moktan, S. (2020). Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five. Journal of Economic Literature. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.20191574

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.