Following up on my recent posts:
- The Top 70 Law Faculties by Citations in Law Reviews (Sept. 13, 2010)
- Which Law Reviews Are Better Than Their School's Faculty (And Vice Versa)? (Sept. 23, 2010)
In our article, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006), we discuss the pros and cons of citation counts (as well as the other rankings measures of reputation surveys, publication counts, and download counts). Brian Tamanaha (Washington University) recently blogged, Doubts About the New "Scholarly Impact" Ranking:
The authors are not doing something better than US News—they are repeating its error of producing a ranking of dubious validity without heed to its negative consequences. The harm inflicted on law schools by US News will be compounded by an additional set of harms that follow from this new “scholarly impact” ranking. This time, however, the wounds will be self-inflicted because law professors are constructing and promoting the new ranking (lending it a patina of credibility).
Greg Sisk (St. Thomas), one of the co-authors of the scholarly impact study, responds:
The pertinent scholarly impact question is whether the work of the present roster of faculty at a law school is percolating among other legal scholars and helping define and contribute to the national scholarly discussion in the legal literature.
