Fear Factor and Impact Factor

WRITING JOURNAL:
FEAR FACTOR & IMPACT FACTOR
Abd Karim Alias
akarim@usm.my
Tuesday, December 27, 2011

FEAR FACTOR? PUBLISH OR PERISH

FEAR OF PUBLISHING?
•Get rejected many times
•Research not up to “standard”
•Lack of scientiﬁc
communication skill
•Lack of conﬁdence &
encouragement
•Poor planning

TO GET PUBLISHED IS NOT EASY
•Rejection rates can be as high
as 60-70%
•Criteria for publication are
more stringent

PUBLISH, NOT PERISH
"How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper" by Robert A. Day
"What I have said in this book is this:
Scientific research is not complete
until the results have been
published.Therefore, a scientific
paper is an essential part of the
research process.Therefore, the
writing of an accurate,
understandable paper is just as
important as the research itself.”

PUBLISH, NOT PERISH
"How to Write and Publish a Scientiﬁc Paper" by Robert A. Day
“…Therefore, the education of a
scientist is not complete until the
ability to publish has been
established.”

WHERETO PUBLISH?
•National/regional journal?
•International citation-indexed
journal?
•International citation-indexed
journal with impact factor?

SCIENTIFIC PERFORMANCE
INDICATORS (METRICS)
•Indexing of scientiﬁc literature
started in 1950s by Eugene
Garﬁeld
•“Citation indexes for science:
A new dimension in
documentation through
association of ideas”,
Science, 122, July 15, 1955:
108.

•Institute for Scientiﬁc Information (ISI)
was established in 1960 - began to
publish Science Citation Index.
•Now published byThompson Reuters
•Published annually in the SCI Journal
Citation Report.

JCR - JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS
•A host of journal information & metrics
•Impact Factor
•5-Year Impact factor
•Immediacy Index
•Cited Half-Life
•Self-Citation Rates
•Article Inﬂuence Score
•Eigenfactor Score

SCIENTIFIC PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
Nature:Vol. 465, June 2010, 864-866

•Simple way to denote inﬂuence
•Hard to compare between ﬁelds
Number of citations
Number of times a researcher or research paper is cited by others

Impact Factor (IF)
The frequency with which an average article in a journal gets cited.
Impact factor 2010 =
All citations received by Journal X in 2010 to any content
published in 2008-2009
No. of citable items published in Journal X in
2008-2009
2010200920082007 2011

ABOUT IMPACT FACTOR
•Introduced in 1963 to assist selection of
journal for SCI.
•Only indicates impact of journals, NOT of
individual researchers or papers
•IF correlates poorly with actual citations of
individual articles.

ABOUT IMPACT FACTOR

ABOUT IMPACT FACTOR
•IF can be affected signiﬁcantly by
a small number of papers in the
journal.

ABOUT IMPACT FACTOR
journal.
•For example: In 2005, 89% of
Nature’s impact factor was
generated by 25% of the
articles

ABOUT IMPACT FACTOR
journal.
articles
“Impact factors don’t tell
us as much as some
people think of the
quality of the science that
journals are publishing”

ABOUT IMPACT FACTOR
journal.
articles
“Impact factors don’t tell
us as much as some
people think of the
quality of the science that
journals are publishing”
See “Not-so-deep-impact”, Nature 435,
1003-1004 (23 June 2005)

IMPACT FACTOR PROS & CONS
•Easy to understand
•Almost universally
accepted.
•Little transparency - underlying
database not publicly available
•2 years citation windows are
biased: 2 years favor rapidly
moving field; 5 years favor
slowly moving field
•Subject field differences
•Easy to misled & manipulate
Pros Cons

IF CAN RISE & DROP
DRAMATICALLY!
IF in 2008 = 2.0
IF in 2009 = 49.9
A case in point: Acta Crystallographica - Section A
The dramatic rise was due to a single article cited
over 6,700 times! Without this article, the IF
would have remained < 3.0!

5-YEAR IMPACT FACTOR
Introduced in February 2009 -- to better gauge
the impact of journals within ﬁelds where
inﬂuence of research evolves over a longer
period of time.

2-YEAR VS 5-YEAR IMPACT FACTOR
Immunology

2-YEAR VS 5-YEAR IMPACT FACTOR
Geology

SUBJECT FIELD DIFFERENCES
Journal IF Impact Factor 2010
Lancet Infectious Diseases
Social Studies of Science
Dyes and Pigments
Food Chemistry

EASYTO MISLEAD & MANIPULATE
Journal can publish a lot of content that is not
an article or review (but the citation of the
content is counted!)
Mislead -- what is counted and what is not counted?
Impact factor 2010 =
All citations received by Journal X in 2010 to any content
published in 2008-2009
No. of citable items published in Journal X in
2008-2009

EASYTO MISLEAD & MANIPULATE
•ISI counted documents classiﬁed as ‘articles’,
‘reviews’ or ‘proceeding papers’ in the
denominator
•Citations to all papers (including editorials,
news items, letters to editor, etc.) are counted
for the numerator.
What exactly counted in the numerator & denominator?

•Editors write editorial
•Editor refers to a lot of journal content
published in last 2 years - all these citations are
counted
TRICKS & MANIPULATIONTO
BOAST IMPACT FACTOR

BEWARE WHILE USING IMPACT
FACTOR
•The absolute value of IF is meaningless
•IFs should not be used to compare
journals across disciplines (e.g., citation
frequency in medicine > mathematics)
•IFs are not very relevant in certain ﬁeld

IMPACT FACTOR ALONE DOES
NOT INDICATE...
•Quality of individual article within a
journal
•The overall quality of research
performed
•The prestige of research or academic
programs/institution

COMMON MISUSES OF IMPACT FACTOR
AS A SOLE CRITERIA
•Promotion/tenure decisions
•University administrators’ rating or
ranking academic & research programs
within and across an institution
•Use as a publicity by journal publishers
to boast their reputation

CAN WE RELY ON IMPACT FACTOR?
•All metrics have limitation!
•We have to understand the limitation of
IF
•Use multiple qualitative & quantitative
measures as much as possible
(e.g., Eigenfactor, h-index)

EIGENFACTOR SCORE
•The Eigenfactor algorithm uses the
structure of the entire network to
evaluate the importance of each
journal, cutting across all diciplines. Self-
citations are excluded.
•This corresponds to a simple model in
which readers follow chains of citations
as they move from journal to journal.

EIGENFACTOR SCORE
•Eigenfactor calculations take into
consideration a 5-year span of citation
activity utilizing data from JCR.
•Journals are considered to be inﬂuential
if they are cited often by other
inﬂuential journals.

WHAT ARETHE CRITERIA OF
A GOOD JOURNAL?
Strong peer-
review process?
High manuscript
rejection rates?
Inclusion of high
quality research?
Impact factor?
Highly respected
editor or editorial
board?
Authors prestige?
Publisher?
Readership - size,
diversity?
User view point

WHAT ARETHE CRITERIA OF
A GOOD JOURNAL?
Document
delivery request
Faculty
recommendation
Citation impact
Usage
Indexing sources
Editorial quality
Publisher
Cost
Librarian view point

CONCLUSION
•Don’t worry so much about impact factor
•Overcome your fear of publishing by getting
your ﬁrst paper published at least in peer-
reviewed journal.
•Publish in journals that are visible and
accessible (i.e., in indexed journal)
•Go for reputable journals that publish only
quality papers (not necessarily high IF) .

Thank You for Your Kind Attention

Fear Factor and Impact Factor

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