Alberto Baccini, Professor of Economics at the University of Siena, points out difficulties posed for smaller academic disciplines, using the example of three history of economic thought journals now excluded from Journal Citations Report (JCR):
There are dozens of open science experiments to overcome the rigidities of scientific communication imposed by large international publishers and companies that produce citation indices. A small community could easily cooperate to take some of these paths, instead of shutting themselves in the blockhouse to defend the citation indices of their journals in national and international rankings.
This event could also be an opportunity for the small scientific community of historians of economic thought to take a firm stand against evaluation practices based on the ranking of journals.
Full article:
Baccini, A. (2018). Boycott the Journal Rankings. Institute for New Economic Thinking. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/boycott-the-journal-rankings