authors discuss potential issues related to assessing journal quality and difficulties

our study should be of greater relevance for RMI faculty who view the JRI as their

primary top quality target journal. We also do not analyze citations to the JRI in non-

WOS journals.5 The author rankings we present are not meant to make any inferences

beyond the scope of our study. For example, some of the most cited papers in RMI

journals were published in economics journals, such as Rothschild and Stiglitz (1970,

1990) and Kimball (1990).6 In addition, some JRI authors may have made significant

contributions to research niches, but because a niche is relatively small, the number of

citations does not reflect the relative contribution to the research niche when all citations

are equally weighted. And, some prominent RMI scholars have published primarily in

other leading RMI journals, such as the Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, or economics

journals rather than the JRI. As with any study, it must be read in light of its limitations

and context.With that in mind, we think some interesting and valuable findings emerge.7

The article is organized as follows. The next section reviews related literature to provide

the context of our study. The “Sample and Data” section describes our sample and data.

be used to make such a decision? Potential non-WOS insurance journals include the Asia-Pacific

Journal of Risk and Insurance, North American Actuarial Journal, Risk Management and Insurance

Review, Journal of Insurance Issues, and Journal of Insurance Regulation. The list of potential non-

WOS finance, economics, and business journals in which citations to JRI articles appear is much

larger, easily in the dozens, if not hundreds.

5 Since 2006, Google Scholar has made it easier to track citations to non-WOS journals and citations

appearing in non-WOS journals, but because it includes working papers and virtually all types

of publications, it presents a “boundary” problem of its own, and one must verify citations

in reference lists to confirm that a publication does in fact cite another work or author. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Scholar. JSTOR a digital library of academic journals

founded in 1995, includes fewer RMI journals than WOS; for example, Insurance Mathematics

and Economics, Astin Bulletin, and Scandinavian Actuarial Journal are in the WOS, but not JSTOR

(see http://about.jstor.org/journals).

6 Chan and Liano (2009) identify the most cited papers appearing in the reference section of

papers published in the Journal of Risk and Insurance (JRI), Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, and

Journal of Insurance Regulation from 2000 to 2004. These authors find that, “in order of impact,

JRI, Econometrica and Journal of Political Economy are considered to be the academic journals that

generate influential works driving risk management and insurance research” (p. 127).

7 Ferguson et al. (2005) use an expert opinion (i.e., survey) approach to identify RMI journal

quality. The authors discuss potential issues related to assessing journal quality and difficulties

using citation counts such as SSCI (see p. 71–72). Among the eight difficulties these aut