Tourism Management 20 (1999) 133 — 139 Tourism and hospitality research journals: cross-citations among research communities Richard M. Howey*, Kathryn S. Savage, Marja J. Verbeeten, Hubert B. Van Hoof   School of Hotel and Restaurant Management, Northern Arizona University, P.O. Box 5638, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5638, USA  College of Business Administration, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA Abstract This article explores one facet of the relationship between the academic disciplines of hospitality and tourism. Citation analysis of articles in hospitality and tourism journals confirms previous research that reveals that there is little intermingling of research between the hospitality and tourism fields. More citations occur within disciplines than across disciplines. However, by far the most citations are to sources outside the hospitality and tourism areas entirely. Implications of these results are discussed.  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction While there is a great deal of communality of interest between the areas of hospitality research and tourism research, academic journals are peculiar to each aca- demic area. The extent to which the research in the journals of each academic area overlaps or draws upon literature from the other area provides evidence of the cross-disciplinary nature of the two fields with respect to each other, and a basis for assessing the possibility for synergy as various topics are investigated. There is some indication that overlap between the hospitality and tourism research communities is limited. For example, a survey of hospitality educators conducted by Schmidgall et al. (1996) presented rankings of the usefulness of 17 hospitality and tourism journals. The two academic tourism journals included in the study (Annals of ¹ ourism Research and Journal of ¹ravel Re- search) were consistently near the bottom of the useful- ness rankings. This paper presents the results of a citation analysis which examined the frequency of cross-citations among top tourism and hospitality management research jour- nals. The paper provides insight into the following questions: * Corresponding author. Tel.: # 1 520 523 1734; fax: # 1 520 523 1711; e-mail: richard.howey@nau.edu 1. What sources have had the greatest impact on re- search published in each of the journals examined? 2. To what extent does research published in journals that specialize in tourism research draw upon articles published in journals that specialize in hospitality research, and to what extent does research published in hospitality journals draw upon articles published in journals that specialize in tourism research? 3. If, as expected, the journals have considerably more within-discipline citations than across-discipline cita- tions, what does this say about the synergy that exists between the two disciplines? 2. Methodology 2.1. Journal selection Six journals were selected for inclusion in this study—three hospitality oriented journals and three tourism-oriented journals. Selection of the journals was based on the published rankings of the journals. Ferreira et al. (1994) surveyed 120 directors of four-year hospital- ity programs in the United States. They were asked to rate the quality of 15 refereed hospitality journals when evaluating a faculty member’s research. The three top rated journals were: International Journal of Hospitality Management (IJHM), Cornell Hotel and Restaurant 0261-5177/99/$ — see front matter  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 2 6 1 - 5 1 7 7 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 0 9 9 - 5