Worrying About the Top 5

Rather than arguing with anyone on Twitter, I’m going to put a response here. A prominent member of the EconTwitter community was posting about the importance of shooting for the Top 5. Here are my thoughts.

Worrying about publishing in the Top 5 doesn’t solve anything. Do Top 5 publications have value? Obviously they do. You’ll have a much higher salary if you get Top 5 publications early in your career. You know what else will have positive benefits? Winning the lottery. There are no practical implications of either. Worrying about something over which you have no control is not going to do anything other than cause stress, depression, procrastination, and lack of productivity. Graduate students reading his tweetstorm are going to experience a reduced quality of life.

You don’t need the Top 5 to have a good career. There are many good academic and nonacademic jobs that don’t require Top 5 publications. You’re not going to get a tenured offer at MIT without an assortment of Top 5. But you don’t need a tenured offer at MIT. You can still have a good life.

Do your best research. The Top 5 only publish certain types of research. Most topics in economics will not be deemed suitable for the Top 5 no matter how important. Good research has three aspects:

• Important
• Interesting
• Fun

Although the research production function isn’t Leontief, weakness in one of the areas is a problem. By important and interesting I mean important and interesting to you. Not what you speculate others will think is important and interesting. As a rule, pretty much everyone is going to think your work is unimportant and uninteresting even if it’s Top 5.

If you do really good research, maybe it will eventually become Top 5 certified. Probably not though. It’s going to be hard to go deep enough to contribute at that level unless you’re checking all three boxes.

You need connections to get into the Top 5. The final thing I’ll say is that the vast majority of submissions to Top 5 are desk rejected by an editor with no expertise in your topic. Having a good affiliation isn’t likely to save you either. It’s tough to get past the initial screen without personally knowing the editor, and once you do, you need referees that are on your side. All papers submitted to Top 5 can be classified as “too specialized” or “not enough contribution” and rejection will be warranted. That’s not to say these papers are published because of connections. They are in most cases legitimately good papers. The point is that someone without the same connections submitting the same paper to the same journal will be rejected and, since rejection is arbitrary, it’s the right decision. Don’t be disappointed, but most economists probably can’t write papers good enough to publish in Top 5 due to the lack of connections. (On the other hand, if you can find a coauthor that has those connections, take advantage of it.)

The list of journals that are valued in the marketplace is quite long and growing. Is it a disaster if you can’t get into the Top 5, but you publish in the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Public Economics, or (heaven forbid) the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics? Those outlets are highly valued in the marketplace. As you go down in the rankings (still great jobs with good salaries) publications in Economic Inquiry and Macroeconomic Dynamics and Southern Economic Journal are valued. It all depends on the institution.

In my opinion, the focus on Top 5 reflects realities of 20 years ago, under the old publication system. The world has changed. Top 5 won’t always mean the same thing in the future. Publications in other journals are going to continue to see their values climb. Sacrificing other publications to focus on a few in Top 5 will continue to lose its appeal as time passes. The number of Top 5 papers I read is a fairly small percentage of all papers I read these days. That’s because 20 years ago, the good stuff really was published in Top 5, but these days most of the papers in Top 5 reflect their appeal on social media rather than their importance to the profession.