Rising Publication Delays Inflate Journal Impact Factors

Journal impact factors have become an important criterion to judge the quality of scientific publications over the years, influencing the evaluation of institutions and individual researchers worldwide. However, they are also subject to a number of criticisms. Here we point out that the calculation of a journal’s impact factor is mainly based on the date of publication of its articles in print form, despite the fact that most journals now make their articles available online before that date. We analyze 61 neuroscience journals and show that delays between online and print publication of articles increased steadily over the last decade. Importantly, such a practice varies widely among journals, as some of them have no delays, while for others this period is longer than a year. Using a modified impact factor based on online rather than print publication dates, we demonstrate that online-to-print delays can artificially raise a journal’s impact factor, and that this inflation is greater for longer publication lags. We also show that correcting the effect of publication delay on impact factors changes journal rankings based on this metric. We thus suggest that indexing of articles in citation databases and calculation of citation metrics should be based on the date of an article’s online appearance, rather than on that of its publication in print.     

Species Distribution Models and Impact Factor Growth in Environmental Journals: Methodological Fashion or the Attraction of Global Change Science

In this work, I evaluate the impact of species distribution models (SDMs) on the current status of environmental and ecological journals by asking the question to which degree development of SDMs in the literature is related to recent changes in the impact factors of ecological journals. The hypothesis evaluated states that research fronts are likely to attract research attention and potentially drive citation patterns, with journals concentrating papers related to the research front receiving more attention and benefiting from faster increases in their impact on the ecological literature. My results indicate a positive relationship between the number of SDM related articles published in a journal and its impact factor (IF) growth during the period 2000–09. However, the percentage of SDM related papers in a journal was strongly and positively associated with the percentage of papers on climate change and statistical issues. The results support the hypothesis that global change science has been critical in the development of SDMs and that interest in climate change research in particular, rather than the usage of SDM per se, appears as an important factor behind journal IF increases in ecology and environmental sciences. Finally, our results on SDM application in global change science support the view that scientific interest rather than methodological fashion appears to be the major driver of research attraction in the scientific literature.     

Reasons for Journal Impact Factor Changes: Influence of Changing Source Items

Both the concept and the application of the impact factor (IF) have been subject to widespread critique, including concerns over its potential manipulation. This study provides a systematic analysis of significant journal Impact Factor changes, based on the relative contribution of either one or both variables of the IF equation (i.e. citations / articles as the numerator / denominator of the quotient). A cohort of JCR-listed journals which faced the most dramatic absolute IF changes between 2013 and 2014 (ΔIF ≥ 3.0, n = 49) was analyzed for the causes resulting in IF changes that theses journals have experienced in the last five years. Along with the variation by number of articles and citations, this analysis includes the relative change of both variables compared to each other and offers a classification of `valid`and `invalid`scenarios of IF variation in terms of the intended goal of the IF to measure journal quality. The sample cohort features a considerable incidence of IF increases (18%) which are qualified as `invalid`according to this classification because the IF increase is merely based on a favorably changing number of articles (denominator). The results of this analysis point out the potentially delusive effect of IF increases gained through effective shrinkage of publication output. Therefore, careful consideration of the details of the IF equation and possible implementation of control mechanisms versus the volatile factor of number of articles may help to improve the expressiveness of this metric.     

Impact factor of Revista Iberoamericana de Micología

The impact factor is a bibliometric indicator published annually in the Journal Citation Reports, and widely regarded as a quality ranking of the journals included in this database. The problem with this indicator is that the impact factor of several journals not listed in the Science Citation Index database is largely unknown. The aim of this study was to analyze the 2001 national and international impact factor of Revista Iberoamericana de Micología. The National impact factor of Revista Iberoamericana de Micología was obtained by adding the number of cites in 2001 from a total of 87 Spanish medical journals of greater scientific quality. Also, bibliographical references from Spanish journals indexed in the 2001 Journal Citation reports database have been included to determine the international impact factor of this analyzed journal. Revista Iberoamericana de Micología received a total of 62 cites from published articles in 1999 to 2001, coming from 20 different journals, being their self-citation index 10.1%. The journal with the highest number of cites to Revista Iberoamericana de Micología was Journal of Clinical Microbiology, with 12 cites (19.3%). According to this findings the national and international impact factor of Revista Iberoamericana de Micología was 0.266 and 0.606, respectively. The impact factor of Revista Iberoamericana de Micología, although not included in the Science Citation Index database, was higher than other Journal Citation Reports. Moreover, Revista Iberoamericana de Micología received most of its citations from high impact factor journals included in the Journal Citation Reports database. These data support the international recognition of the scientific level of the journal.     

1997—2009年《生命科学研究》载文、作者、基金资助论文和影响因子统计分析

对<生命科学研究)1997-2009年的载文、作者、基金支持论文和影响因子情况进行了统计分析,得出该刊13年来发展的一些规律,为进一步提高该刊的学术水平和影响力提供依据.利用维普(VIP)资讯系统(中文科技期刊数据库),采用文献计量法,分析<生命科学研究>1997-2009年的载文量、作者合作度、合作率、以及地域分布、基金支持、影响因子等指标和内容.13年共检出886篇文献,作者3 544人次,合作度为4,合著率为94.92%.作者分布在全国29个省、自治区和直辖市,高等医药院校作者最多.占作者总数的84.76%.13年<生命科学研究>共发表各类基金资助论文734篇.影响因子和总被引频次逐年提升.该刊因其著者整体学术水平高,在生命科学研究领域有较大的影响.已成为我国生命科学研究领域具有普遍的指导意义、影响深远的重要学术性期刊和中文核心期刊.     

不懈探索, 努力引领中国生物多样性科学发展——《生物多样性》创刊三十周年回顾

为更好地推动我国生物多样性科学的发展, 提升期刊服务能力, 并庆祝创刊30周年, 我们梳理了《生物多样性》2013-2022年的主要进展。(1)近10年中, 期刊的特色进一步凸显。围绕学科前沿、国家重大行动计划、履约等领域共策划出版56个专辑/专题, 新设立编者按、生物编目、数据论文、保护与治理对策、生物文化多样性等特色栏目, 通过发表数据论文、生物编目等文章推动数据共享, 以及通过鼓励学术争鸣、探索中文期刊的国际传播等举措使期刊的特色进一步凸显。(2)期刊载文量快速增加, 报道的内容不断拓展。研究方向由前20年的61个增加为目前的78个, 90%左右的文章聚焦于生物多样性保护、环境科学/生态学等领域; 植物学、动物学、微生物学的稿件分别占41.79%、47.48%和4.61%。基于关键词的文献计量分析表明, 近10年刊登的文章关键词聚类为遗传多样性、群落结构、红外相机、红色名录、生物多样性公约、国家公园、植物多样性、分类学和地理分布等9个子领域。培养了大批生物多样性人才, 10年中共有4,665位作者署名(作者记录数6,295), 发表文章最多的前20位作者主要来自中国科学院相关研究所、中国环境科学研究院、北京大学等机构, 其中60%为编委。(3)刊登的论文被广泛引用和下载。根据中国知网数据(排除了学位论文和会议论文, 2022年10月18日), 近10年刊登的文章有1,211篇累计被引用13,507次, 平均每篇被引11次以上; 网上下载量从2012年的6.64万次增加到2021年的23.85万次。有5篇文章入选中国科协优秀科技论文或中国百篇最具影响国内学术论文; 以国家公园、红外相机、红色名录、多功能性、生物入侵为关键词的文章是受关注的热点。《生物多样性》的影响因子和总被引频次在生物学领域一直排名前列; 是《科技期刊世界影响力指数(WJCI)报告》中全球保护生物学领域唯一的中国期刊, 2019年和2020年分别位列23/48和25/49位。最后我们探讨了今后如何继续引领中国生物多样性研究和保护、建设一流科技期刊面临的挑战和对策以及如何进一步提升科学传播能力。     

基于文献计量学的《中国真菌学杂志》发展态势分析

目的对《中国真菌学杂志》创刊以来的刊发论文进行文献计量分析,了解期刊发展态势,为期刊发展提供决策依据。方法采用中国知网CNKI数据库对《中国真菌学杂志》创刊以来(2006～2012年)的刊发论文进行分析,主要观察指标包括:载文量、被引频次、基金论文比、网络传播趋势等,对相关指标进行统计分析。结果杂志创刊8年以来(2006～2012)共出版42期,共发表论文843篇,期均载文20篇,年均载文120篇,载文量基本稳定。论文被引频次逐渐上升,截止2013年6月9日,单篇论文最高被引频次42次,被引频次超过4次的文献达169篇,占总载文量的20.05%。杂志复合总被引及综合总被引均明显上升,综合影响因子也偏稳定,较创刊初期略有上升,但自引率有上升趋势。论文主要来源于主编、副主编及编委会成员所在单位,仍较局限。真菌疾病诊治基础医学及中医药学研究是未来的热点,值得重视。结论《中国真菌学杂志》创刊8 a来发展喜人,基本覆盖了国内重要的真菌学研究机构,期刊发展潜力较大,但期刊影响力有待进一步提高。     

Exploring the evolution of sustainable fisheries development: Focusing on ecological,environmental and management issues

Living marine resources are crucial for guaranteeing food security, meeting nutritional needs, generating employment, and solving other human challenges worldwide. Nevertheless, resource overexploitation and environmental contamination pose serious challenges to the sustainable development of fisheries (SDF). Numerous studies have been conducted in various disciplines worldwide to address these challenges. In this study, we collected 4450 journal articles from the Web of Science Core Collection database to help explain the evolution process, current state of affairs, research hotspots, and trends of research on the SDF. Using bibliometric tools, VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and Scimago Graphica, a scientometric analysis was conducted to define the knowledge structure by visualizing the co-occurrence network, co-authorship network, co-citation network, and emergence analysis. The findings indicate that the number of publications in this field are expanding rapidly, and key events related to the SDF have influenced publication numbers. Additionally, performance analysis from the author, journal and national perspectives provides scientific information for researchers. The thematic content on the SDF has also changed to emphasize ecosystem structure and its services.     

放线菌代谢产物的研究进展：基于Web of Science (WOS)和中国知网(CNKI)

【背景】放线菌是一类极其重要的微生物,代谢产物丰富,在医药、生物技术、农业和酶工业等领域均有广泛应用。【目的】客观分析放线菌代谢产物的研究进展,为该领域相关工作人员提供有效情报,推动该领域高质量发展。【方法】对Web of Science (WOS)和中国知网(China National Knowledge Infrastructure, CNKI)数据库中放线菌代谢产物的发文数量、发文国家、发文机构、发文期刊、发文出版社、发文作者、被引文章和研究方向进行统计分析,利用H指数对相关影响力进行综合评价,其研究热点、发展趋势通过Cite Space和VOSviewer软件进行可视化分析。【结果】WOS结果显示,放线菌代谢产物研究领域全球影响力最大的国家是美国,影响力最大的机构是美国加利福利亚大学,影响力最大的期刊是美国Applied and Environmental Microbiology,影响力最大的出版社是Elsevier,影响力最大的作者是来自英国约翰英纳斯研究中心微生物学部的Mervyn J Bibb教授。全球放线菌代谢产物领域的主要研究方向是微生物学,研究热点是生物合成。研...     

Qualitative and quantitative aspects of recent research on helminth parasites

Relationships between the species diversity of different taxa, the mean number of articles published per year on each taxon, and the mean impact factor of the journals in which they appear, were examined across six taxa of helminths: Nematomorpha, Acanthocephala, Monogenea, Trematoda, Cestoda and Nematoda, the latter including only animal parasitic nematodes. The mean annual output of scientific articles per taxon was not related to the species diversity of these taxa or, at least, not significantly. Thus, the large volume of publications on nematodes is not merely a reflection of their estimated diversity. There were significant differences among taxa in the mean impact factor of the journals in which papers on each taxon appeared, with nematodes having the highest mean score, followed by trematodes and cestodes. In addition, across the six taxa, the mean journal impact factor correlated positively and significantly with the mean annual number of papers published: not only are there more papers published on nematodes and trematodes than on nematomorphs or acanthocephalans, but they are also generally published in higher-ranking journals. These results suggest that there is an increasing gap in the quantity and general importance of the research carried out on different helminth taxa.     

Content Factor: A Measure of a Journal's Contribution to Knowledge

Impact Factor, the pre-eminent performance metric for medical journals, has been criticized for failing to capture the true impact of articles; for favoring methodology papers; for being unduly influenced by statistical outliers; and for examining a period of time too short to capture an article's long-term importance. Also, in the era of search engines, where readers need not skim through journals to find information, Impact Factor's emphasis on citation efficiency may be misplaced. A better metric would consider the total number of citations to all papers published by the journal (not just the recent ones), and would not be decremented by the total number of papers published. We propose a metric embodying these principles, "Content Factor", and examine its performance among leading medical and orthopaedic surgery journals. To remedy Impact Factor's emphasis on recent citations, Content Factor considers the total number of citations, regardless of the year in which the cited paper was published. To correct for Impact Factor's emphasis on efficiency, no denominator is employed. Content Factor is thus the total number of citations in a given year to all of the papers previously published in the journal. We found that Content Factor and Impact Factor are poorly correlated. We further surveyed 75 experienced orthopaedic authors and measured their perceptions of the "importance" of various orthopaedic surgery journals. The correlation between the importance score and the Impact Factor was only 0.08; the correlation between the importance score and Content Factor was 0.56. Accordingly, Content Factor better reflects a journal's "importance". In sum, while Content Factor cannot be defended as the lone metric of merit, to the extent that performance data informs journal evaluations, Content Factor- an easily obtained and intuitively appealing metric of the journal's knowledge contribution, not subject to gaming- can be a useful adjunct.     

Negative changes in the scientific publication process in ecology: potential causes and consequences

1. Increasingly viewed to have societal impact and value, science is affected by complex changes such as globalisation and the increasing dominance of commercial interest. As a result, technical advancements, financial concerns, institutional prestige and journal proliferation have created challenges for ecological and other scientific journals and affected the perception of both researchers and the public about the science that they publish. 2. Journals are now used for more than dissemination of scientific research. Institutions use journal rankings for a variety of purposes and often require a pre‐established number of articles in hiring and budgetary decisions. Consequently, journal impact factors have achieved greater importance, and the splitting of articles into smaller parcels of information (‘salami‐slicing’) to increase numbers of publications has become more frequent. 3. Journals may prescribe upper limits to article length, even though the average length of articles for several ecological journals examined has increased over time. There are clear signs, however, that journals without length limits for articles will become rarer. In contrast to ecological journals, taxonomic journals are not following this trend. 4. Two case histories demonstrate how splitting longer ecological articles into a series of shorter ones results in both redundancy of information and actually increases the journal space used overall. Furthermore, with current rejection rates of ecological journals (often ～80%), many thin salami‐sliced articles jam the peer‐review system much longer (through resubmission after rejection) than unsliced articles previously did (e.g. when rejection rates were ～50%). In our experience, the increased pressure to publish many articles in ‘high‐impact’ journals also may decrease the attractiveness of a future scientific career in ecology to young people. 5. ‘Gatekeeping’ of journal quality has shifted from editors to reviewers, and several recent trends are apparent including: bias about appropriate statistical methods; reviewers being more rigid overall; non‐native English writers being criticised for poor communications skills; and favourable reviews being signed more often than unfavourable ones. In terms of production, outsourcing of copy editing has increased the final error rate of published material. 6. We supplemented our perceptions with those of older colleagues (～100 experienced ecologists) that responded to an informal survey on this topic (response rate: 81%). In the opinion of almost 90% of our respondents, the overall review process has changed and for 20% among them the professional quality of reviews has declined. 7. We, and many older colleagues, are convinced there have been some negative changes in the scientific publication process. If younger colleagues share this concern, we can collectively counter this deteriorating situation, because we are the key to the publishing and evaluation process.     

Open Access Meets Discoverability: Citations to Articles Posted to Academia.edu

Using matching and regression analyses, we measure the difference in citations between articles posted to Academia.edu and other articles from similar journals, controlling for field, impact factor, and other variables. Based on a sample size of 31,216 papers, we find that a paper in a median impact factor journal uploaded to Academia.edu receives 16% more citations after one year than a similar article not available online, 51% more citations after three years, and 69% after five years. We also found that articles also posted to Academia.edu had 58% more citations than articles only posted to other online venues, such as personal and departmental home pages, after five years.     

Who is publishing in Theriogenology and on what subjects?

An analysis of 503 articles published in the journal Theriogenology in 1984, 1987 and 1990 was conducted to identify research trends and researchers publishing in the journal. A 30.5% increase in the number of papers published was found for 1990. During the 3yr period studied, the United States and Canada accounted for 63.1% of the total number of articles published, followed by European countries with 14.3%, and by Asia with 12.0%. At least 1 paper was published from 41 countries. The United States, at the top of the list, increased its share from 16% in 1984 to 21% in 1990. The number of papers from Japan increased significantly while the percentage of participation from Europe declined. The female animal was the sole subject of 63.2% of the articles, and cattle were the most researched species, appearing in 44.3% of the studies. Although the estrous cycle was the most studied reproductive event in all 3 yr, there was also a trend for the popularity of this topic to decrease in favor of the subject fertilization. The number of authors per paper increased significantly over the years analyzed, as did the number of studies carried out in international cooperation. Institutes of higher education were represented in almost 70% of the papers, followed by research institutes (12.8%). The present analysis confirms the central role that the journal Theriogenology plays in the world-wide communication of research results in animal reproduction.     

基于文献计量学的百合属植物研究态势分析

基于Web of Science（简称WoS）核心数据库检索了1998-2018年间百合属植物文献,利用CiteSpace软件从国家、机构、作者、期刊以及高被引文章等方面进行了文献计量学统计分析。1998-2018年间共发表百合属植物文章1 058篇,2006年后中国发表文章数量居榜首并呈波动增长,中国科学院发表的文章数量在研究机构中排名第一。排名前2位的作者均来自荷兰瓦赫宁根大学。发文量及影响力最大的期刊是Scientia Horticulturae。发文量前10位的研究百合属植物的文章80%属于基础科学和技术科学,研究热点集中于形态学、细胞和分子生物学方向。近5年被引频次最多的高被引论文集中在百合属植物活性物质的功能验证、活性成分及其在营养健康方面的功效等方向,这些领域成为百合属植物研究的新趋势。     

The strike rate index: a new index for journal quality based on journal size and the h-index of citations

Quantifying the impact of scientific research is almost always controversial, and there is a need for a uniform method that can be applied across all fields. Increasingly, however, the quantification has been summed up in the impact factor of the journal in which the work is published, which is known to show differences between fields. Here the h-index, a way to summarize an individual's highly cited work, was calculated for journals over a twenty year time span and compared to the size of the journal in four fields, Agriculture, Condensed Matter Physics, Genetics and Heredity and Mathematical Physics. There is a linear log-log relationship between the h-index and the size of the journal: the larger the journal, the more likely it is to have a high h-index. The four fields cannot be separated from each other suggesting that this relationship applies to all fields. A strike rate index (SRI) based on the log relationship of the h-index and the size of the journal shows a similar distribution in the four fields, with similar thresholds for quality, allowing journals across diverse fields to be compared to each other. The SRI explains more than four times the variation in citation counts compared to the impact factor.     

The Impact of National Institutes of Health Funding on U.S. Cardiovascular Disease Research

Background

Intense interest surrounds the recent expansion of US National Institutes of Health (NIH) budgets as part of economic stimulus legislation. However, the relationship between NIH funding and cardiovascular disease research is poorly understood, making the likely impact of this policy change unclear.

Methods

The National Library of Medicine''s PubMed database was searched for articles published from 1996 to 2006, originating from U.S. institutions, and containing the phrases “cardiolog,” “cardiovascular,” or “cardiac,” in the first author''s department. Research methodology, journal of publication, journal impact factor, and receipt of NIH funding were recorded. Differences in means and trends were tested with t-tests and linear regression, respectively, with P≤0.05 for significance.

Results

Of 117,643 world cardiovascular articles, 36,684 (31.2%) originated from the U.S., of which 10,293 (28.1%) received NIH funding. The NIH funded 40.1% of U.S. basic science articles, 20.3% of overall clinical trials, 18.1% of randomized-controlled, and 12.2% of multicenter clinical trials. NIH-funded and total articles grew significantly (65 articles/year, P<0.001 and 218 articles/year, P<0.001, respectively). The proportion of articles receiving NIH funding was stable, but grew significantly for basic science and clinical trials (0.87%/year, P<0.001 and 0.67%/year, P = 0.029, respectively). NIH-funded articles had greater journal impact factors than non NIH-funded articles (5.76 vs. 3.71, P<0.001).

Conclusions

NIH influence on U.S. cardiovascular research expanded in the past decade, during the period of NIH budget doubling. A substantial fraction of research is now directly funded and thus likely sensitive to budget fluctuations, particularly in basic science research. NIH funding predicts greater journal impact.