Supporting literature searches for business researchers

Find research in the top journals of your field.

Three steps. Journal Basket writes the database search for you, limited to journals rated by the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC).

About the ABDC list

The ABDC Journal Quality List is the Australian Business Deans Council's guide to the quality of business journals, developed for the Australian and New Zealand research community and recognised internationally. The Council, the peak body for Australia's business schools, has published it since 2008; expert panels last reviewed it in 2025, rating each journal from A* to C. What the ratings mean

2,648 rated journals
42 business disciplines
2 databases: Scopus and Web of Science

Check your journals See every journal in your basket with its rating, and leave any out. Write up your search Copy a methods paragraph, references and a journal list code for your thesis or paper. New to literature reviews? A student's guide: approaches, steps, key readings by discipline, and practice activities. Using AI tools? How to use Claude, ChatGPT and Google Scholar Labs to sharpen your search and find and check papers, responsibly.

Journals in Your Basket

Discipline

How many journals

Ratings are shown exactly as published in the ABDC Journal Quality List, but this is not the official list. Before you rely on a rating, check it in the official ABDC Journal Quality List.

Not every journal here is in Scopus. In a test of every journal in October 2026, 449 found no articles in Scopus; about a third of them are law journals. Your search still includes them, but finds nothing from them. Why, and what you can do.

What do A*, A, B and C mean?

Untick a journal to leave it out of your searches.

Include	Journal	Rating	Field	ISSNs

Write-up

Everything you need to report your search in a thesis, report or article.

Methods Paragraph

Written automatically from your choices. Journal Basket builds this paragraph from what you chose on the Search page (discipline, basket size, search words and settings), and it changes when you change them. Check every detail against what you actually did, and edit it to suit your paper.

References

The paragraph cites these two sources. Add them to your reference list.

Use with an AI Assistant

Copy a ready-made request, with the details of your search, and paste it into your own AI assistant, such as ChatGPT, Claude or Microsoft Copilot. This site sends nothing anywhere. New to using AI for research? Read the guide to using AI tools.

What would you like help with?

See what will be copied

Check anything an AI suggests before you use it, and follow your university's rules on using AI in research. Some ask you to say that you used it.

Journal List Code

…

This code identifies the exact set of journals you searched. Think of it as a label for your journal list.

The same list of journals always gives the same code.
Add or remove even one journal, or use a different edition of the ABDC list, and the code changes.
Quote the code in your paper and include the downloaded journal list. A reader or examiner who rebuilds your basket here can compare the codes to confirm they are looking at exactly the same journals.

Supplementary Material

The full journal list, with ratings, ISSNs and the journal list code, as a spreadsheet.

Search text used

Help

How to Use It

Choose a discipline on the Search page, or one of the ABDC fields.
Choose how many journals to search. "Top journals only" (A*) is the smallest set; "Every rated journal" includes all of them. See what the ratings mean.
Type your search words as you would in Scopus, for example "audit quality" AND analytics, and click Search in Scopus.
Check or adjust the journals on the Journals page, and copy your methods paragraph from the Write-up page.

What the Ratings Mean

The ABDC (the Australian Business Deans Council, which represents Australia's business schools) sorts business journals into four quality bands. Panels of senior academics compare each journal with the others in its own field of research, looking at its reputation and how often its articles are cited by other researchers. Based on ABDC's own definitions (the percentages are a guide, so the actual shares vary a little):

A*: The highest band: roughly the top 5–⁠7% of journals in each field. Recognised internationally as the leading journals in their field.
A: The second band: roughly the next 15–⁠25%. Journals whose articles are among the most cited in their field.
B: The third band: roughly the next 35–⁠40%. Journals with a good to excellent reputation and citation record.
C: The fourth band: the remaining journals that meet ABDC's quality standard. This includes some excellent journals written mainly for practitioners (people working in business rather than in research).
None: Not on the list. Journals that fall below ABDC's quality standard, or are not mainly about business, are left out. So are predatory journals (journals that charge authors to publish without proper checking). This site searches only journals on the list.

Good to know

A rating describes the journal, not each article. Excellent papers appear in B and C journals, and not every paper in an A* journal is excellent. Judge each paper on its own merits.
C does not mean poor. Every journal on the list has met ABDC's quality standard.
Ratings compare journals within one field. An A* accounting journal is among the best in accounting; it is not directly comparable with an A* marketing journal.
Ratings change. ABDC reviews the list every few years (most recently in 2025), so always say which edition you used. The Write-up page does this for you.
Other lists exist, such as the UK's Chartered ABS Academic Journal Guide and the Financial Times' FT50, and they may rate the same journal differently. Ask your supervisor which list your school uses.
Which basket to choose: "Top and very good journals" (A* and A) gives a focused set of leading journals and is a good start. Widen to "A wider selection" (A* to B) or "Every rated journal" for a new or specialised topic, or when you need to be thorough, as in a systematic review (a review that aims to find every relevant study).

Source: ABDC, ABDC Journal Quality List and its 2025 review report (March 2026).

Why Some Searches Come in Parts

Scopus and Web of Science can reject very long searches, so large baskets are split into parts. Run each part, then open the search history in Scopus or Web of Science and combine them with OR (for example #1 OR #2 OR #3). Smaller baskets need just one search.

Where the Journals Come From

All journals and ratings come from the ABDC Journal Quality List, published by the Australian Business Deans Council at abdc.edu.au. Ratings are shown exactly as published. Journal Basket is an independent tool: it is not an official ABDC product, and it is not produced, authorised or endorsed by the ABDC. The only official searchable list is the ABDC's own, at abdc.edu.au.

Journals That Scopus Does Not Include

Scopus does not include every journal on the ABDC list. In a test of every journal in October 2026, 449 found no articles in Scopus. About a third are law journals (ABDC field 4801, Commercial law); most of the others are C-rated journals in economics, accounting and other fields. Your searches still include these journals, but nothing from them will appear in the results. To cover them, search the journal's own website, or ask your library which database includes it (law journals are often in law databases).

Discipline Presets

ABDC files each journal under one broad field. Each discipline here uses a home field plus, where useful, a few specialist journals from other fields. The presets are drafts and are being checked by colleagues in each area.

Direct fit The discipline matches its ABDC field.
Shared field It shares its field with related disciplines; your search words do the narrowing.
Spread across fields Its specialist journals sit in several ABDC fields.
Coverage gap Many of its main outlets are not on the ABDC list.

The Journal List Code

Every basket has a short code, shown on the Write-up page. The same list of journals always gives the same code, and changing even one journal (or the ABDC edition) gives a different code. Quote it in your paper with the downloaded journal list, so readers can confirm exactly which journals were searched. Technically, it is the first 12 characters of a SHA-256 hash of the ABDC edition and one ISSN for each journal.

Settings

Library login for Scopus and Web of Science links

ISSNs per journal

Most ISSNs in one search part

Usage So Far

The search counter is not switched on yet.

One search is counted each time someone clicks Search in Scopus or Search in Web of Science.

Privacy

Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere by this site. Searches only go to Scopus or Web of Science when you open them.

The site keeps one thing: a running count of searches for each database. When you click a search button, it adds one to the count for Scopus or for Web of Science. Your search words, your journals, who you are and where you are are not recorded, and the site uses no cookies.

The Citing and Using AI Tools pages have EndNote videos from YouTube. They load only if you press Play; YouTube (Google) then receives your visit and may use cookies of its own, under its own privacy policy.

Credits

Based on the idea behind litbaskets.io by Sebastian Boell and Blair Wang (ACIS 2019).