Commentary Is the journal Ecological Economics really in itself a poor and misleading guide to what ecological economics is about? A reply to “Influencing the perception of what and who is important in ecological economics” Andreas G.F. Hoepner a, b , Benjamin Kant c , Bert Scholtens a, d, ⁎, Pei-Shan Yu a a Centre for Responsible Banking & Finance, School of Management, University of St. Andrews, The Gateway, North Haugh, St. Andrews, KY16 9SS, UK b Principles for Responsible Investment, PRI Secretariat, c/o UN Global Compact, DC2-612, United Nations, New York, NY 10017, USA c Sustainable Living LLC., Lake Forest, IL 60045, USA d Department of Economics, Econometrics and Finance, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV, Groningen, The Netherlands ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 5 February 2013 Received in revised form 18 February 2013 Accepted 1 March 2013 Available online 25 March 2013 Keywords: Citation analysis Environmental economics Ecological economics Age adjustment 1. Introduction We investigate what articles, journals, authors and institutions are influential in a combination of fields in agricultural, ecological, envi- ronmental and resource economics (Hoepner et al., 2012). The fields all investigate the natural environment, be it from different perspec- tives. Influence is based on the impact factors as reported in Thomson Reuter's Web of Knowledge. We analyze 6597 articles in fourteen economics journals for the period 2000–2009. In his comment, Pro- fessor Clive Spash states that “the journal Ecological Economics is in it- self a poor and misleading guide to what ecological economics is about, exactly because it has devoted so much space to mainstream methods, studies and approaches.” Furthermore, he suggests that our work is biased by its framing and sensitive to changes in key definitions. Here, we plead guilty as we do have in mind an assessment of what is influential academic research in particular fields of econom- ics. Given that we provide an historical account, the findings are re- stricted to the period we investigate and subject to our criteria, which are clearly stated in the paper. We are pleased that Spash can Ecological Economics 89 (2013) 174–176 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Economics, Econometrics and Finance, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV, Groningen, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 503637064. replicate the results although he disagrees with the criteria. However, we plead not-guilty to the suggestion that we override, belittle and dismiss alternative thought. For all the 6000+ articles that fulfill the criteria, we use exactly the same approach. We do not suggest that ecological economics is the same as agricultural, resource or en- vironmental economics. It is not, just like agricultural economics is not the same as environmental economics. Nor is it is a subfield of re- source and environmental economics, just like environmental eco- nomics is not a subfield of ecological economics. We do not think our study advocates a limited perspective on social, environmental and economic problems and that we include political and ideological framing. The only framing we use is that we focus on economics. It es- pecially is here that we clash with Spash. We think that our study shows what articles in environmental, agricultural, resource and eco- logical economics are influential in a particular timeframe and aca- demic context. The structure of this reply is as follows. In ‘Science or Sorcery’ we discuss the use of citations. In ‘Noun or Adjective’ we discuss the po- sition of the different fields of economics investigated in our paper. In ‘Karl and Groucho’ we address the main remaining remarks of Spash. In the conclusion, we briefly conclude. 2. Science or Sorcery The analysis of citations helps to improve the understanding of the development of science. It also helps to investigate the influence of works, authors, and outlets. Some characteristics of citations are of importance as they impact the meaningfulness of the information de- rived from them. These are that it can ignore the influence of work outside academia. For example, policy makers and opinion leaders can have an impact on the development of particular fields. Our paper is subject to this flaw too as we limit ourselves to those who ac- tually publish in economic journals in particular economic fields. Sec- ond is that it usually focuses on articles in academic journals and much less so on books, chapter, newspaper articles, etc. In our paper, we focus on journals and not on other outlets. This is because the journals in our analysis have a clear reviewing procedure which sets academic criteria for publication. With books, policy papers, newspaper articles, etc., commercial and political motives often inter- fere with the decision to publish. Third is a bias against more recent Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Ecological Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon 0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.03.001