Google has announced an enhancement to its Scholar Metrics that allows users to view citation rankings of journals in various categories. Among the rankings is Google's ranking of law reviews, as well as a number of specialty law reviews such as technology law and international law.
The rankings are based on Jorge Hirsch's "h-index," which is an alternative to impact factor as a measure of a journal's importance. The new Google rankings will be yet another entrant for ranking law reviews alongside Washington and Lee's rankings.
It is encouraging that Google's software engineers come up with roughly similar rankings to those that legal scholars would likely produce. Below is a table with Google's top 10 rankings.
| Publication | h5-index | h5-median | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Harvard Law Review | 44 | 71 |
| 2. | Stanford Law Review | 44 | 67 |
| 3. | Columbia Law Review | 43 | 70 |
| 4. | University of Pennsylvania Law Review | 41 | 70 |
| 5. | Michigan Law Review | 38 | 65 |
| 6. | UCLA Law Review | 38 | 59 |
| 7. | Texas Law Review | 38 | 55 |
| 8. | Yale Law Journal | 38 | 53 |
| 9. | Georgetown Law Journal | 36 | 63 |
| 10. | Virginia Law Review | 36 | 55 |
As of right now, the Google law review rankings have a few limitations. First, the rankings only display the top 20 law reviews. Second, the rankings are based on articles in the 2007-2011 five-year period, so the rankings won't reflect the influence of "classics" that have garnered many, many citations over the years.
UPDATE: Using the same Google data, I have compiled a list of the most-cited law review articles published in these journals between 2007 and 2011.
UPDATE 2: I have extended the Google rankings to include the rankings for over 200 law reviews here.
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