Anderson: Google Scholar 2018 Law Review Rankings

Following up on my previous post, 2018 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews:  Rob Anderson (Pepperdine), Google Scholar Metrics 2018 Law Review Rankings:

Google Scholar has released its 2018 Scholar Metrics data, and the new law review rankings are available here. I have published these rankings for law reviews for most of the past several years, although they have often stimulated some controversy. 

This year, I decided to compare the Scholar Metrics results with the widely used Washington and Lee law review rankings. ...

Note that you can click the hyperlinked numbers in the “Google h5-index” column to see the most cited articles published in the last five years for each journal.

Rank	Journal	Google h5-index	Google h-median	Google Avg	W&L Combined	W&L Journals
1	Harvard	45	76	60.5	100	6240
2	Yale	45	67	56	94.7	5539
3	Columbia	34	61	47.5	78.6	4260
4	Pennsylvania	34	60	47	74.8	4204
5	Stanford	36	56	46	73.2	4005
6	L. & Hum. Behavior	34	48	41	7.2	394
7	Georgetown	31	49	40	77.6	4223
8	California	27	53	40	60.3	3269
9	Cornell	31	48	39.5	60.1	3030
10	Am. J. Int'l L.	26	53	39.5	24.2	1490
11	Texas	29	49	39	61.7	3646
12	Fordham	31	46	38.5	61.4	3661
13	NYU	31	44	37.5	63	3277
14	Virginia	29	46	37.5	55.4	3174
15	J. L., Med. & Ethics	32	40	36	11.3	700
16	UCLA	29	41	35	60.5	3256
17	Minnesota	28	41	34.5	62.8	3376
18	University of Chicago	31	38	34.5	48.9	2873
19	J. L. & Econ.	25	43	34	8.8	462
20	Iowa	29	38	33.5	60.6	3229
21	Vanderbilt	25	41	33	52.6	2842
22	Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y	23	41	32	33.7	1798
23	Duke	26	37	31.5	60.1	3030
24	Michigan	28	34	31	69	3540
25	Boston University	26	35	30.5	52.2	2997

Rob Anderson (Pepperdine), 2018 Law Review Rankings from Google Scholar Metrics:

The two measures tracked one another quite well, which is perhaps not surprising as both are based on citations. However, the Google Scholar data reveals some  blind spots in the Washington and Lee rankings. As the latter are based on citations from law reviews, they tend to discount some elite "law and" or "interdisciplinary" journals. Thus, the Journal of Legal Studies, Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, The Journal of Law & Economics, and the American Journal of International Law, appear only average in the W&L rankings. In fact, however, most of these are considered very selective journals. Of the flagship law reviews, only the University of Chicago Law Review has a similar pattern, but not as extreme. 

Although faculty who publish in the relevant fields know the reputation of these journals well, I have often heard them compared by generalist faculty unfavorably to even average flagship law reviews. I hope this data helps to curb the blind spots that we can all have for specialty journals outside our areas of expertise.

In my own area of empirical legal studies, I find it notable that the upstart Journal of Empirical Legal Studies has finally caught (and perhaps even passed, depending on which measure is used) the Journal of Legal Studies, which has long served as a standard-bearer for empirical and law & economics work.