Journal level impact assessment a diversity of new metrics

Sarah HuggettPublishing Information Manager, Scientometrics & Market Analysis, Research & Academic

Relations25th September 2012

A multi-faceted journal evaluation landscape

2

Journal level metrics: why and how?

Growth in outputAppropriate use

3

Results of a quick poll…

4

Growth of scholarly communications

5

<1900 00s 10s 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 00s0

10000

20000

30000~3% per year

Use of journal indicators

6

“1) For journal editors and publishing houses the impact factors give market research information. Editors are able to approximate “their” journals’ standing in comparison to other thematically closely related periodicals.”

“2) For libraries impact factors are useful for collection development, especially in combination with further indicators, primarily journal prices. Combined indicators, for example, Euros per unit of impact factor or a combination of this indicator with cost-per-use, may be effective for serial selection.”

3) Authors get hints on journals in which they can publish their research results (in case there are any authors in academia who do not know “their” appropriate periodicals).”

“In no case is it possible to

use a journal impact factor

on the article level to

evaluate the influence of

an article, an author or an

institution.”

The skewness of citation distribution in journals

7

Cumulative contribution of articles with different citation rates to total journal impact.

0 20 40 60 80 1000

20

40

60

80

100

% articles

% citations

8

Citations rates vary across fields

Arts & Humanities

Business, Management & Accounting

Social Sciences

Economics, Econometrics & Finance

Mathematics

Engineering

Veterinary

Computer Science

Energy

Health Professions

Nursing

Physics & Astronomy

Materials Science

Earth & Planetary Science

Psychology

Agricultural & Biological Sciences

Environmental Science

Chemical Engineering

Medicine

Pharmacology, Toxicology & Pharmaceutics

Chemistry

Immunology & Microbiology

Neuroscience

Biochemistry, Genetics & Molecular Biology

Multidisciplinary

0 1 2 3 4 5 60 1 2 3 4 5 6

9

Citations rates vary across article types

Cit

ati

on

s

Years after publication

Articles

Short communications

Reviews

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Popularity metricsImpact Factor

Source Normalized Impact per Paper

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Popularity metrics

11

Journal Citation Reports

Source Normalized Impact per Paper

12

Year -3 Year -2 Year -1 Citing year

Available on ScopusSimilar to Impact Factor, but considers 3 yearsMeasures contextual citation impactCitations weighted by the likelihood of citation in the subject field of source

Improvements in progress

Prestige metricsEigenFactor

Scimago Journal Rank

13

Prestige metrics

14

Journal Citation Reports

SCImago Journal rank

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Year -3 Year -2

Year -1 Citing year

Freely available at scimagojr.com; on ScopusSimilar to Impact Factor, but considers 3 yearsSelf-citations limitedCitations weighted by the SJR of the citing journal

Improvements in progress

UsageMESUR

COUNTER

16

Usage

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Citation Ethics

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Why do we cite?How should we cite?

1. paying homage to pioneers;

2. giving credit for related work;

3. identifying methodology, equipment, etc.;

4. providing background reading;

5. correcting one’s own work;

6. correcting the work of others;

7. criticizing previous work;

8. substantiating claims;

9. alerting researchers to forthcoming work;

10. providing leads to poorly disseminated, poorly indexed, or uncited work;

11. authenticating data and classes of fact-physical constants, etc.;

12. identifying original publications in which an idea or concept was discussed;

13. identifying the original publication describing an eponymic concept or term, e.g.

Hodgkin’s disease;

14. disclaiming work or ideas of others;

15. disputing priority claims of others.

Citations: “a private process with a public face”

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“Reward or persuasion?The battle to define the meaning of a citation”

Coercive citations

Citation cartels

The metrics of the future?

20

A multi-dimensional picture

21

IF

SJR

ImInd

h-index

EF

A multi-faceted journal evaluation landscape

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Thank you for your attention

Any questions or comments?