Social Marketing: Academic Publication Outlets & Journal Quality

Personally, as an academic, I find publishing research results is often a little bewildering: On the one side there are literally thousands of journals in business alone – but finding the right ones to publish in is sometimes a challenge. Not at least, because with the REF looming in the UK, journal quality has become an important factor for me when considering where to send a manuscript. My university tends to rely highly on the Association of Business Schools Journal Quality list, which has fairly recently been updated (new list can be found here). Unfortunately, the updated version seems to have dropped a few (sometimes important) journals, crucially maybe Social Marketing Quarterly, some journals were relegated as they had lost their sparkle – and obviously new journals are not yet included (such as the forthcoming Journal of Social Marketing). Either way,  I thought it might be useful to compile and share an overview of the journals that more or less frequently publish articles related to social marketing – and their ranking in the ABS list. The ranking on the ABS list is from 4 (top international journal) to 1 (recognised).

This list may not be complete, as I simply looked through my Endnote file to identify the journals (if you have any additions, please let me know!). Also some of these journals may only very rarely publish anything related to social marketing (e.g. Business and Industrial Marketing), while others may be much more social-marketing-friendly. Of course, the ABS list in itself is not the only list that there is – there are a number of other ones, and a more extensive list can be found here. However, not withstanding these points, the ABS list does give (at least in my view) a pretty good overview over potential publication outlets – and the perceived quality of the publication.

Of course, publishing about research in social marketing is not only confined to journals which are “business-aligned”. In fact, many articles I regularly use come from health related fields etc – so for completeness here are some other journals from other fields that also regularly feature social marketing research:
Addiction, Addiction Research and Theory, Alcohol and Alcoholism , American Journal of Infection Control, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, BMC Public Health, British Food Journal, British Journal of General Practice, Conservation and Recycling, Drug and Alcohol Review, Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, Education for Health, Environmental Management, Health Education, Health Education Research, Health Education Research Theory and Practice, Health Policy, Health Promotion International, Health Promotion Practice, International Gambling Studies, International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, Journal of Smoking Cessation, Medical Decision Making, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, Nutrition Reviews, Perspectives in Public Health, Preventing Chronic Disease, Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Public Health, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Social Science & Medicine, The Diabetes Educator, The European Journal of Public Health, The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, Tobacco Control.