Journals Titles and Mission Statements: Lexical structure, diversity and readability

TL;DR

This study analyzes the lexical structure, diversity, and readability of journal titles and mission statements in business, management, and accounting, revealing significant differences based on journal reputation and access type.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive lexical analysis of journal titles and mission statements, highlighting differences related to journal prestige and access groups in BMA.

Findings

Reputable journals have higher lexical diversity in mission statements.

Lower-ranked journals emphasize indexing attributes in their mission statements.

Significant differences exist in mission statement diversity across journal types and quartiles.

Abstract

There is an established research agenda on dissecting an articles components, title and abstract readability and diversity, keywords, number references, and determining their association with bibliometrics performance. Yet, journals titles and their overview, aim and scope (i.e., journals mission statement, JMS(s) have not been investigated with the same diligence. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive outlook of titles and JMSs lexical structure and identify significant differences between journals prestige and type of access groups and their JMS content in the field of business, management and accounting (BMA). Lexical network analysis was used to explore journals title structure. JMS were examined through the Flesch-Kincaid grade level for readability and the Yules K for lexical diversity. Titles and JMS structural analysis reflected current and critical discussion in BMA: an obsession for counterintuitive findings and ICT tools. JMS expressed mostly target customers and markets. JMS from reputable journals showed a higher betweenness for key terms related to rigorous features, while JMS of lower reputable journals highlighted indexing attributes (i.e., Scopus). Wilcoxon rank sum and Kruskal Wallis tests showed significant differences in the JMS median diversity regarding the journals type of access and best quartiles.