Grading Business Journals: A Comparative Analysis of ABS, ABDC and JCR Quartiles and Proposing an Algorithm Based Classification

There are multiple journal rankings that measure academic journals in business research. Among them, ABS (AJG), ABDC and JCR quartiles are the most widely used in business schools across the globe. Which is better in grading business journals based upon their academic performance? In this study, we used the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and evaluated 103 business journals based on six scientometric indicators. Then we proposed a grading simulation approach to simulate the original grades based on the TOPSIS scores and the results suggest that the JCR quartile is the closest to our simulation, while ABDC and ABS ranked second and third respectively. Lastly, drawing on the K-means clustering algorithm, we grouped the journals into four ordinal classes based on ABS, ABDC, JCR quartile and TOPSIS scores.