Journal impact factors and month of publication

A growing literature examines the reliability of commonly used metrics for journal quality, such as journal impact factors. The present paper shows that month of publication can have a significant impact on the number of times an article is cited in the two years following publication. Combined with existing research, this finding suggests economics departments should rely less on these commonly used measures of journal quality when making tenure and promotion decisions and focus more effort on direct assessments of the faculty member's work. Given the shift towards online dissemination, the findings also suggest publishers should consider moving to a more frequent publication schedule in order to disseminate the research in a more timely fashion. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.