More TRBs More Troubles

| David Levinson

2 years ago or so, I posted The Transportationist: The Trouble with TRB.
The Trouble has not been eliminated, and talks continue, I post an edited email from Georgina Santos on the same topic (reproduced with permission:
“Dear Eric,
Please find attached some numbers re: TRR.
Some people at the Transportation Economics Committee
Meeting suggested that the peer-review process was not
rigorous enough and the quality of the journal itself was
not great.
I don’t have an opinion with respect to that issue but I
do know that TRR is not widely electronically available
and I strongly suspect that the main reason for that is
the price.
David Levinson suggested splitting the journal in different
strands. He will give you more feedback on that idea. One
important point about splitting the journal is that
university libraries may only subscribe to one or two strands
according to where their research interests are and in this
way they will make the journal more affordable to them,
as they will pay for fewer issues per year.
Lowering the price of the electronic version is another very
important strategy that could work wonders.”
I would add that splitting the journal has several beneficial aspects, first is that it lowers costs. Second, for the healthy parts of the journal, they are not dragged down by the unhealthy parts, that is, there are better and worse committees of TRB, and which publish better and worse papers in TRR. Separation will allow the better sections have a higher impact factor. Finally, if they are separated, cross-citations between the several journals will be fully counted rather than considered internal self-citations.
Some data compiled by Georgina
Impact Factor
Transportation Science & Technology group of ISI
Transportation Res B-Meth 1.948, Rank 1
Transport Res Rec 0.206, Rank 17
The Price of TRR is
2009 2008
Print Only $4,475 $3,805
Print & Online $5,125 $4,450 (Online Access to 2008 Records Only)
Print & Online $6,425 $5,600 (Online Access to 2003 – 2008 Records)
In comparison
Journal of Transport Economics and Policy
2009: £137 / US $267
Transport Reviews
2009 Online Only £699.00 plus VAT $1,060
2009 Print & Online £736.00 plus VAT $1,116
Transport Policy
Online Only: $614
Print and Online $753
Transportation Research A
$1,788
One might add
Journal of Transport and Land Use
*Free*

One thought on “More TRBs More Troubles”

  1. Famous journals are already there, and good research universities can afford the cost; it should be noted that researchers in these universities are the main players. Not sure how much effort it will take to break the current “rich get richer” phenomenon and create a new one, unless the majority of the authors
    can foresee the potentiality of the open source journals and are willing to take the risk.

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