Journal Impact Factor

We study the distributions of citations received by a single publication within several disciplines, spanning broad areas of science. We show that the probability that an article is cited c times has large variations between different disciplines, but all distributions are rescaled on a universal curve when the relative indicator c f = c/c0 is considered, where c0 is the average number of citations per article for the discipline. In addition we show that the same universal behavior occurs when citation distributions of articles published in the same field, but in different years, are compared. These findings provide a strong validation of c f as an unbiased indicator for citation performance across disciplines and years. Based on this indicator, we introduce a generalization of the h-index suitable for comparing scientists working in different fields.

2012 83: 579 originally published online J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/83/6/579 Updated information and services can be found at: These include: Material Supplementary html http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/suppl/2012/06/06/jnnp-2011-301381.DC1.

The lack of predictability of citation-based measures frequently used to gauge impact, from impact factors to short-term citations, raises a fundamental question: is there long-term predictability in citation patterns? Here we derive a mechanistic model for the citation dynamics of individual papers, allowing us to collapse the citation histories of papers from different journals and disciplines into a single curve, indicating that all papers tend to follow the same universal temporal pattern. The observed patterns not only help us uncover basic mechanisms that govern scientific impact, but also offer reliable measures of influence that may have potential policy implications.

Background: Reports of clinical trials usually emphasize efficacy results, especially when results are statistically significant. Poor safety reporting can lead to misinterpretation andinadequateconclusionsabouttheinterventionsassessed. Our aim was to describe the reporting of harm-related results from randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Historically, papers have been physically bound to the journal in which they were published but in the electronic age papers are available individually, no longer tied to their respective journals. Hence, papers now can be read and cited based on their own merits, independently of the journal’s physical availability, reputation, or Impact Factor. We compare the strength of the relationship between journals’ Impact Factors and the actual citations received by their respective papers from 1902 to 2009. Throughout most of the 20th century, papers’ citation rates were increasingly linked to their respective journals’ Impact Factors. However, since 1990, the advent of the digital age, the strength of the relation between Impact Factors and paper citations has been decreasing. This decrease began sooner in physics, a field that was quicker to make the transition into the electronic domain. Furthermore, since 1990, the overall proportion of highly cited papers coming from high impact factor journals has been decreasing, and of these highly cited papers, the proportion not coming from highly cited journals has also been increasing. Should this pattern continue, it might bring an end to the use of the Impact Factor as a way to evaluate the quality of journals, papers and researchers.

Objective : An updated systematic review was carried out of research studies looking at the value and impact of library services on health outcomes for patients and time saved by health professionals. Methods : A comprehensive systematic search was undertaken of the published literature to September 2003 in  ,  ,  ,  ,  , the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register and Google. Some handsearching was carried out, reference lists were scanned and experts in the field were contacted. Twentyeight research studies of professionally led libraries for health-care staff, including clinical librarian projects, met the inclusion criterion of at least one health or 'time saved' outcome. Papers were critically appraised using internationally accepted criteria. Data were extracted and results were summarised using a narrative format as the studies were heterogeneous and precluded a statistical analysis. Results : There is evidence of impact from both traditional and clinical librarian services. The higher quality studies of traditional services measured impacts of 37-97% on general patient care, 10 -31% on diagnosis, 20 -51% on choice of tests, 27-45% on choice of therapy and 10 -19% on reduced length of stay. Four studies of clinical librarian projects suggested that professionals saved time as a result of clinical librarian input, and two of these studies showed evidence of cost-effectiveness. However, the clinical librarian studies were generally smaller, with poorer quality standards. Conclusions : Research studies suggest that professionally led library services have an impact on health outcomes for patients and may lead to time savings for health-care professionals. The available studies vary greatly in quality but the better quality studies also suggest positive impacts. Good practice can be gathered from these studies to guide the development of a pragmatic survey for library services that includes the direct effects for patients among the outcome measures.

Quantifying coauthors’contributions will encourage a healthy dialogue about the meaning of coauthorship and author rank  will promote better consideration of author rank in assessing scientific impact, and will lead to improved ways to measure and report coauthor contributions.

The scientific literature was scanned for the published research articles dealing with countercurrent chromatography (CCC) over the time period 1980-May 2008. The search returned 1638 articles that were analyzed focussing on people and applications. Concerning the people, it was found that the geographical location of the CCC authors was relatively well balanced between USA, Asia with mainly China and Japan and Europe. Yoichiro Ito, the inventor of the technique, is by far the most productive author in the field with 331 articles or more than one over five CCC articles published in the time period. Without surprise, English is the dominant language with more than 82% of the articles. A significant 8% amount of CCC articles were published in Chinese in Chinese journals. Chromatography journals are the logical tribune for half of the published CCC articles. Concerning the applications, the separation and purification of natural compounds is the dominant theme in CCC making the subject of more than one article over two. Starting from the plant extract, CCC in few steps can produce significant amounts of more than 95% pure compounds used for identification and/or property studies. Other applications are found in the pharmaceutical and chemical field. The separation of enantiomers on the preparative scale is a field of growing importance.

Background: The journal Impact factor (IF) is generally accepted to be a good measurement of the relevance/quality of articles that a journal publishes. In spite of an, apparently, homogenous peer-review process for a given journal, we hypothesize that the country affiliation of authors from developing Latin American (LA) countries affects the IF of a journal detrimentally.

This paper analyses the entire publication history of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) by analyzing 1747 documents from 1973 to June 2018. Citation networks were examined from available metadata such as author and index keywords, and institutional affiliations, and abstracts were analyzed using network analysis and text mining techniques. The analysis is supported by the use of data visualization tools and community detection algorithms. Results suggest three main communities addressed throughout JAMS' publication history (firm capability and performance, brand and value co-creation and customer service) and nine main themes (brands' strategic value, firms' strategy and financial performance, customer service, sales, marketing communications, retailing, distribution channel, global markets, and corporate social responsibility). Although empirical quantitative studies account the larger type of research published by JAMS, results also highlight JAMS' contribution to marketing theory building and methodological issues in the shape of both conceptual/theoretical papers and scale development papers.

The design and analysis of cluster randomized trials can require more sophistication than individually randomized trials. However, the need for statistical methods that account for the clustered design has not always been appreciated, and past reviews have found widespread deficiencies in methodology and reporting. We reviewed cluster randomized trials of cancer screening interventions published in 1995-2010 to determine whether the use of appropriate statistical methods had increased over time. Literature searches yielded 50 articles reporting outcome analyses of cluster randomized trials of breast, cervix and colorectal cancer screening interventions. Of (6/11), 82% (9/11), 92% (12/13) and 60% (9/15) used appropriate analytic methods, respectively. Results were suggestive of a peak in 2003-2006 (p=.06) followed by a decline in 2007-2010 (p=. 08). While the sample of studies was small, these results indicate that many cluster randomized trials of cancer screening interventions have had deficiencies in the application of correct statistical procedures for the outcome analysis, and that increased adoption of appropriate methods in the early and mid-2000's may not have been sustained.

Evaluative bibliometrics uses advanced techniques to assess the impact of scholarly work in the context of other scientific work and usually compares the relative scientific contributions of research groups or institutions. Using publications from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) HIV/AIDS extramural clinical trials networks, we assessed the presence, performance, and impact of papers published in 2006-2008. Through this approach, we sought to expand traditional bibliometric analyses beyond citation counts to include normative comparisons across journals and fields, visualization of co-authorship across the networks, and assess the inclusion of publications in reviews and syntheses. Specifically, we examined the research output of the networks in terms of the a) presence of papers in the scientific journal hierarchy ranked on the basis of journal influence measures, b) performance of publications on traditional bibliometric measures, and c) impact of publications in comparisons with similar publications worldwide, adjusted for journals and fields. We also examined collaboration and interdisciplinarity across the initiative, through network analysis and modeling of coauthorship patterns. Finally, we explored the uptake of network produced publications in research reviews and syntheses. Overall, the results suggest the networks are producing highly recognized work, engaging in extensive interdisciplinary collaborations, and having an impact across several areas of HIV-related science. The strengths and limitations of the approach for evaluation and monitoring research initiatives are discussed.

Background: Qualitative research appears to be gaining acceptability in medical journals. Yet, little is actually known about the proportion of qualitative research and factors affecting its publication. This study describes the proportion of qualitative research over a 10 year period and correlates associated with its publication.

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.

The need for population-based studies of adults with CHD has motivated the growing use of secondary analyses of administrative health data in a variety of jurisdictions worldwide. We aimed at systematically reviewing all studies using administrative health data sources for adult CHD research from 2006 to 2016. Using PubMed and Embase (1 January, 2006 to 1 January, 2016), we identified 2217 abstracts, from which 59 studies were included in this review. These comprised 12 different data sources from six countries. Of these, 55% originated in the United States of America, 28% in Canada, and 17% in Europe and Asia. No study was published before 2007, after which the number of publications grew exponentially. In all, 41% of the studies were cross-sectional and 25% were retrospective cohort studies with a wide variation in the availability of patient-level compared with hospitalisation-level episodes of care; 58% of studies from eight different data sources linked administrative data at a...

Surgery is one of the most rapidly developing specialties in the past century. Diagnostic methods, operation technique, and knowledge of the diseases are changing continuously. In the academic history, lots of classic papers brought advances for surgery. They were accepted and cited numerously by the medical specialists all over the world. Citation analysis reflects the recognition a work has received in the scientific community by its peers. The articles in the field of surgery have been cited at least 1,000 times since its publication to 2011 were analyzed. By categorizing the publication year, journals, authors, institutions, countries, life citation cycles, level of evidence provided, and characteristics of the topmost articles, we intended to determine what qualities make the articles important to the specialty. The methodology used in this study was based on the Science Citation Index Expanded database of Web of Science from Thomson Reuters. According to Journal Citation Repor...

The modern science system relies on intense evaluation of scientific publication, in which scientific impact is highly emphasized, but its contribution to the progress of science has been controversial. Focusing on two aspects of the science system, resource allocation and academic career design, this study explores whether these policies, presumably aiming at high-impact research, actually achieve the goal. Drawing on in-depth interviews and econometric analyses of Japanese biology professors, this study first shows that merit-based resource allocation can result in biased resource allocation, and that excessive resource concentration can facilitate low-impact publications. Second, results show that a lack of mobility, in particular inbreeding, increases low-impact publications while international mobility decreases it. The latter effect is found to be mediated by fewer publications in low-impact journals, and thus, internationally mobile academics seem to decide the publication destination more strategically.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in surgery can provide valuable evidence of the efficacy of interventions if they are well-designed, appropriately executed, and adequately reported. Adequate reporting of methodology in surgical RCTs is known to be poor, and adverse-event reporting in surgical research is inconsistent. The Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement is a framework to help authors report their findings in a transparent manner. Extensions to the CONSORT statement have been published recently to address deficiencies in adverse-event reporting and in reporting of specific criteria related to nonpharmacologic treatments. The aim of this study was to assess the quality of reporting of trial methodology and adverse events in a sample of general surgical RCTs published in high-quality surgical journals using the criteria specified in the CONSORT statements.We used impact factor to identify the top three ranked surgical journals in 2004. We then obtained information on all RCTs published in these journals in the 2005 calendar year. We assessed quality of reporting using Jadad score, compared the quality of RCTs from CONSORT-endorsing journals with nonendorsers, and assessed the number of RCTs adequately reporting key generic methodologic, adverse-event−related, and specific nonpharmacologic criteria.Of 42 RCTs analyzed, only 40% (17 of 42) had a Jadad score ≥3. There was no significant difference in the number of high-quality RCTs published in CONSORT-endorsing journals compared with nonendorsers (p = 0.3). The median percentage of RCTs adequately reporting generic methodologic, adverse-event−related, and specific nonpharmacologic criteria was 32.5%, 17%, and 36.5%, respectively.Quality of reporting of generic methodologic, adverse-event−related, and specific nonpharmacologic criteria in surgical RCTs is poor. Increased attention to quality of reporting of surgical RCTs is required if studies are to meet published criteria.

H-index is the most commonly applied tool to evaluate scientific productivity. In this study, the use of the H-index to evaluate scientific production in swine veterinary medicine was explored. A database of 137 pig infectious agents was constructed, including its taxonomic division, zoonotic potential, status as emerging pathogen and whether it was OIE-listed. The H-index and the total number of citations were calculated for those pathogens, the location of the affiliation of the first author of each paper included in the H-index core was registered and, for the ten pathogens with the highest H-index, evolution over time was measured. H-index values were compared to the M quotient, A-index, G-index, HG-index and the G/H ratio. H-indices were found to be severely affected by search accuracy and the database was hand curated. Swine pathogen H-indexes were highly dispersed ranging from 0 to 106 and were generally higher for pathogens causing endemic diseases in large pig producing cou...

This study, based on systematic review and meta-analysis, aimed to collect and analyze evidence on correlation between perception-based journal rankings and the most popular citation-based measure, Thomson Reuters Journal Impact Factor (JIF). A search was conducted in the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases. After the screening of titles, abstracts, and full text, 18 articles were selected as eligible for review and analysis. The included studies belonged to various subject areas in social sciences, science, and technology. The correlation coefficients found in most of the studies were statistically significant in a positive direction. The heterogeneity test was positive. Therefore, the random-effect method of meta-analysis was applied. The value of pooled correlation coefficient indicated a moderate positive relationship between two methods of assessing the quality of academic journals. The absence of a high correlation makes decision making based on a single ranking method dangerous. Therefore, a hybrid approach for journal assessment is recommended.

Background: One of the disadvantages of the Impact Factor (IF) is self-citation. The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator excludes self-citations and considers the quality, rather than absolute numbers, of citations of a journal by other journals. The present study re-evaluated the influence of self-citation on the 2007 IF for 18 major orthopaedic journals and investigated the difference in ranking between IF and SJR. Methods: The journals were analysed for self-citation both overall and divided into a general group (n = 8) and a specialized group (n = 10). Self-cited and self-citing rates, as well as citation densities and IFs corrected for selfcitation (cIF), were calculated. The rankings of the 18 journals by IF and by SJR were compared and the absolute difference between these rankings (ΔR) was determined.

Despite its limitations, citation analysis remains one of the best currently available tools for quantifying the impact of articles. Bibliometric studies list the "best-sellers" in a single location, and they have been published frequently in many fields during recent years. The purpose of the present study was to report the qualities and characteristics of citation classics in orthopaedic knee research. The database of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was utilized for identification of articles published from 1945 to March 2014. All knee articles that had been published in sixty-five orthopaedic and twenty-nine rheumatology journals and that had been cited at least 200 times were identified. The top 100 were selected for further analysis of authorship, source journal, number of citations, citation rate (both since publication and in 2013), geographic origin, article type, and level of evidence. The publication dates of the 100 most-cited articles ranged from...

This study analyzes funding acknowledgments in scientific papers to investigate relationships between research sponsorship and publication impacts. We identify acknowledgments to research sponsors for nanotechnology papers published in the Web of Science during a one-year sample period. We examine the citations accrued by these papers and the journal impact factors of their publication titles. The results show that publications from grant sponsored research exhibit higher impacts in terms of both journal ranking and citation counts than research that is not grant sponsored. We discuss the method and models used, and the insights provided by this approach as well as it limitations.

Through a 4-year follow-up of the abstracts submitted to the European Society of Cardiology Congress in 2006, we aimed at identifying factors predicting high-quality research, appraising the quality of the peer review and editorial processes, and thereby revealing potential ways to improve future research, peer review, and editorial work.

Rationale : Funding decisions for cardiovascular R01 grant applications at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) largely hinge on percentile rankings. It is not known whether this approach enables the highest impact science. Objective : Our aim was to conduct an observational analysis of percentile rankings and bibliometric outcomes for a contemporary set of funded NHLBI cardiovascular R01 grants. Methods and Results : We identified 1492 investigator-initiated de novo R01 grant applications that were funded between 2001 and 2008 and followed their progress for linked publications and citations to those publications. Our coprimary end points were citations received per million dollars of funding, citations obtained <2 years of publication, and 2-year citations for each grant’s maximally cited paper. In 7654 grant-years of funding that generated $3004 million of total National Institutes of Health awards, the portfolio yielded 16 793 publications that appeared betwe...

Traditionally, the most commonly used source of bibliometric data is the Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge, in particular the (Social) Science Citation Index and the Journal Citation Reports, which provide the yearly Journal Impact Factors. This database used for the evaluation of researchers is not advantageous in the humanities, mainly because books, conference papers, and non-English journals, which are an important part of scientific activity, are not (well) covered. This paper presents the use of an alternative source of data, Google Scholar, and its benefits in calculating citation metrics in the humanities. Because of its broader range of data sources, the use of Google Scholar generally results in more comprehensive citation coverage in the humanities. This presentation compares and analyzes some international case studies with ISI Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar. The fields of economics, geography, social sciences, philosophy, and history are focused on to illustrate the differences of results between these two databases. To search for relevant publications in the Google Scholar database, the use of “Publish or Perish” and of CleanPoP, which the author developed to clean the results, are compared.