Impact Factor: Use and Abuse

This lecture tells you all you need to know about Impact Factor in Academic Publishing, Use and Abuse

Transcript

1. Impact Factor Use and Abuse Malibu Rohwani
2. But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. Sir Francis Darwin
3. Journal Impact Factor O Developed in the 1960’s O Eugene Garfield and Irving Sher O To help select journals for the SCI O Journal Citation Reports first produced in 1975
4. The impact factor Journal Z IF 2011= All citations from Thomsons Reuters journals in 2011 to papers in journal Z Number of citable articles published in journal Z in 2009 & 2010
5. How the JIF should be used O Wisely! O It should be used with ‘informed peer review’ (lots of things influence citation rates)
6. How is the JIF used? Authors Where will I publish for maximum impact? What is the top journal in my discipline?
7. How is the JIF used? Funding Agencies Number of publications, number of citations, number of articles published in high impact journals Universities: Recruitment, Promotion, tenure
9. JIF: issues, influences, limitations O Discipline Differences O Different citing behaviour across disciplines e.g. Business (10-11 years before articles are cited) or few citations in some areas of Mathematics for example are not taken into account The IF cannot be used to compare journals across different subject areas “these reflect differences in disciplinary dynamics, not in quality” (Nature Editorial)
10. British Journal of Radiology • In 2008, the impact factor (IF) of the British Journal of Radiology rose from 1.77 to 2.3. • Study showed that only 12% of citations to the journal in a single year were to articles published in previous 2 years • 50% of cites to the BJR were to papers published in the previous 9 years.
11. JIF: issues, influences, limitations O 80/20 rule O Citations are not distributed equally across all articles O IF alone cannot be used to assess the quality of individual articles O No guarantee articles will be highly cited O Nature study found that 89% of Nature’s citations in 2004 were generated by 25% of its papers O Another study showed that a top US scientific evidence based guide cited articles from low impact journals O Articles can be cited for other reasons other than ‘a positive evaluation of its content’
12. JIF: issues, limitations O Potential for manipulation O Self-citations O ‘Strategic Behaviour’ to improve a journal’s IF O Increase number of items that are most likely to be cited, when they appear in the journal etc O Weakness of the IF algorithm (numerator vs denominator count)
13. JIF: issues, influences, limitations O The IF Algorithm The number of times items published in Nature during 2006-2007 were cited in journals during 2008 divided by ____________________________________________ The number of ‘citable’ articles published in Nature in 2006 and 2007 (substantive items, primary research articles, reviews) = a journal publishing lots of ‘non-citable’ items can achieve a higher IF than journals that predominantly publish ‘citable’ items = Cite your editorials!
14. Editor O Editors may artificially increase their journal’s IF by O (1) Coercive citation: facilitating or even demanding self-citation O (2) increasing nonsource items (editorials) with citations, O (3) limiting the total number of articles and/or the number of original papers and increasing the number of review and/or technical articles that are more likely to be O (4) prerelease or timing of publication early during a year thus allowing more time for citation for a given year
15. Self citations O Thomson Reuters considers self-citation beyond 20% as suspect of abuse O A record number of 66 journals have been banned from this year’s impact-factor list O because of excessive self-citation or O because of ‘citation stacking’ (in which journals cite each other to excessive amounts).
16. Self citations O The World Journal of Gastroenterology O In 2000, the journal received its first impact factor, 0.993. O The next year, in 2001, it increased to 1.445. O In 2002, It increased again to 2.532 and O In 2003 to 3.318.
17. Some Banned O International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis O International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems O International Journal of Crashworthiness O International Journal of Electrochemical Science O International Journal of Wavelets Multiresolution and Information Processing
18. Editorials O The easiest way to increase your journal’s impact factor is through an editorial. O Exempt from peer review O An editor is able to cite scores of articles from one’s own journal and have it published quickly and without delay. O “The NHJ 2012 in retrospect: which articles are cited most?” written by E.E. Van der Wall, editor of the Netherlands Heart Journal. O Published in December 2012, the brief editorial contains 25 self-citations to the NHJ, 24 of which cite articles written between 2010 and 2011 — the window from which the journal’s next impact factor will be calculated.
19. Coercive citation O Editorial feedback to corresponding authors to include self-citations O Citation coercion has been experienced by about 20% of academic authors, and younger faculty are more likely to succumb when editors or publishers “request” more journal citations. O While the vast majority of respondents (86%) viewed citation coercion as inappropriate behavior, more than half (57%) indicated that they would consent to the request.
20. Editor self publishing O Some editors have used their journal as a personal vehicle for dissemination and promotion of their own work O December 2008 issue of Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Five of the articles are written by the editor, Mohamed El Naschie. O Mohamed El Naschie has written nearly 300 articles in the journal since its inception.
21. SOCIAL MEDIA O Share your O findings… O And get cited
22. Conclusions O No single ‘perfect’ JIF O Objective tools have a role and can contribute to the evaluation of research quality when used appropriately – must be aware of their limitations! O Abuse through self citations O Ongoing debate….