The Strange Classification of Psychology Journals and the Mysterious case of the Bulletin de Psychologie

Abstract

The classification of academic psychology journals by a French joint committee of the Agency for evaluation of Research and Higher Education (AERES), the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the National Council of Universities (CNU) has raised many protests in the French scientific community. This article examines two aspects of the question: 1) The relevance of the criteria set forth by the commission to classify journals; 2) On the basis of a detailed analysis of 48 French journals in psychology defined within this classification, it objectively compares the classification with the criteria announced (index, number of citations, language of publication, novelty of indexing...). On the first point, it appears that the criteria used by the commission are not relevant. On the second point, the results of the study show that even if these criteria were relevant, they do not explain the classification.