If you work in business, economics, information systems, or a related field, you've almost certainly been asked at some point whether a journal is "on the ABDC list," and if so, what rating it carries. The Australian Business Deans Council's Journal Quality List has become one of the most widely consulted journal rating systems in these disciplines, well beyond Australia itself, because it's free, comprehensive, and regularly updated.
What the Four Ratings Represent
The ABDC list rates journals on a four-tier scale: A*, A, B, and C. A* is reserved for what the list considers the leading journals in a field — outlets with the highest standards of peer review, the strongest track record of publishing field-defining work, and the most competitive acceptance rates. A-rated journals are still excellent, well-regarded outlets, generally sitting just below the A* tier in prestige and selectivity. B-rated journals are solid, credible outlets that maintain real peer review standards without the top-tier reputation. C-rated journals are recognized, legitimate publications that meet the list's baseline quality bar but sit at the more accessible end of the scale.
How a Journal Gets Rated
The rating process isn't a popularity vote — it draws on multiple inputs including editorial board composition, citation and impact data from external sources, peer nomination and review by field experts, and comparison against journals already established at each tier. Ratings are periodically reviewed and can move a journal up or down between editions of the list, which is part of why checking the current year's list matters rather than relying on a rating you remember from a few years back.
Why the List Matters Beyond Australia
Even outside Australian institutions, the ABDC list gets used informally as a quick, standardized reference point precisely because it's free and covers a huge number of journals — the 2025 list includes 2,649 titles across accounting, finance, management, marketing, economics, information systems, and related fields. A hiring committee, tenure reviewer, or journal-selection conversation can reference "an A journal on the ABDC list" and be reasonably confident everyone in the room understands roughly what that means, even without a shared institutional policy that formally adopts the list.
What the Rating Doesn't Tell You
An ABDC rating is a field-wide judgment about a journal generally, not about any individual paper published in it — a weak paper in an A* journal and a strong paper in a B journal both exist, and the rating shouldn't be mistaken for a guarantee either way. It also doesn't capture how well a specific journal's scope fits your specific paper, which matters just as much as prestige when deciding where to submit.
Look Up Any Journal in Seconds
Rather than searching for the ABDC spreadsheet and scrolling through thousands of rows, Know Your Faculty's [Journal Rankings tool](/journal-rankings) lets you search all 2,649 journals from the current list directly, free with no sign-up — type a journal name and get its rating instantly. Many journal pages also show the journal's SJR/Scopus quartile and papers published per year alongside its ABDC rating, giving you a fuller picture in one lookup.