Long Luong · 3 min read · Resources
Top Academic Journals in Economics, Finance and Accounting
Stand on the shoulders of giants. I will document list of reputated journals in this post.
Respected Journals in Economics, Finance, and Accounting
These top journals are agreed by many scholars to be the most prestigious journals in the field of Economics, Finance, and Accounting. Note that there are many great papers that are published outside of these journals.
Top 5 Economics journals
- American Economic Review (AER)
- Journal of Political Economy (JPE)
- Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE)
- Review of Economic Studies (RES)
- Econometrica
Top 3 Finance journals
Top 3 Accounting journals
- The Accounting Review (TAR)
- Journal of Accounting Research (JAR)
- Journal of Accounting and Economics (JAE)
Other top Finance and Accounting journals
- Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (JFQA)
- Journal of Corporate Finance (JCF)
- Journal of Banking and Finance (JBF)
- Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR)
- Review of Accounting Studies (RAST)
- Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS)
Search Snippets
Some useful search snippets that can be copy and paste into popular search engines.
Google Scholar
Besides normal search syntax, like quotes for exact match, minus sign for exclusion, etc. Google Scholar also supports one important syntax: source:"Journal Name". This syntax allows you to search for papers in a specific journal. Combining this syntax with the OR operator, you can search for papers in multiple journals at once. Here are some of my favorite.
Top 5 Economics journals.
(source:"American Economic Review" OR source:"Journal of Political Economy" OR source:"Quarterly Journal of Economics" OR source:"Review of Economic Studies" OR source:"Econometrica")Top 3 Finance journals.
(source:"The Journal of Finance" OR source:"Journal of Financial Economics" OR source:"Review of Financial Studies")Top 3 Accounting journals.
(source:"The Accounting Review" OR source:"Journal of Accounting Research" OR source:"Journal of Accounting and Economics")All top journals in Economics, Finance, and Accounting.
(source:"American Economic Review" OR source:"Journal of Political Economy" OR source:"Quarterly Journal of Economics" OR source:"Review of Economic Studies" OR source:"Econometrica" OR source:"The Journal of Finance" OR source:"Journal of Financial Economics" OR source:"Review of Financial Studies" OR source:"The Accounting Review" OR source:"Journal of Accounting Research" OR source:"Journal of Accounting and Economics")Web of Science
https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/basic-search
The same logic applies to Web of Science, but its search string is a bit different. The search string in WoS involves two parts:
ALL=(keyword) indicates the keyword I want to search for, and SO=((journal 1) OR (journal 2)) indicates the journals I want to search in.(I don’t know why they chose SO as the search key for journal 🥲). You can also change ALL to TS for topic, TI for title, AB for abstract. However, I find ALL works well most of the time.
An example of searching for papers in Economics or Finance in WoS.
ALL=((keyword 1) AND (keyword 2))ANDSO=((JOURNAL OF FINANCE) OR (REVIEW OF FINANCIAL STUDIES) OR (JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS) OR (AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW) OR (ECONOMETRICA) OR (JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY) OR (QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS) OR (REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES))I will update more detail to this list when I have more experience with the focus of each journal.
