Limitations and future research
As with all studies, this research has limitations. First, the choice of the six journals in the benchmarking group affected the results. The selection of the SCML journals was clear, since the six SCML journals added to Web of Science in the last several years were used. However, many more business journals added to the group in recent years could have been used in the benchmark group. The six journals in the benchmark group are similar in format to the journals in the target group of SCML journals, from well-known publishers, and are widely available. Nevertheless, the selection of those six journals influenced the results when comparing the performance of the two groups. Thus, choosing six other business journals added to Web of Science in 2003 or later might have yielded different results. Similar limitations are associated with the results of the comparison of six authors from each journal. Although these authors were chosen randomly, a different group of authors may have yielded different findings. In addition, the study covered only the data from the two years (2007 and 2008) directly prior to the addition of five of the six SCML journals to the Web of Science database. Data from other years, or from additional years, may also have provided different results. Finally, despite the care taken in the collection of our data, errors may have crept in. This study required a great deal of counting, and some of the data were collected multiple times to check for accuracy. Still, it is possible that mistakes were made.