Application of Bibliometric Analysis to Letters Journals in Organic Chemistry

Abstract

ABSTRACT Subject librarians are well-positioned to apply and teach searching techniques using online library resources for assisting researchers and scholars on where to publish. A bibliometric analysis was used to compare four premier letters journals in organic chemistry: Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters, Letters in Organic Chemistry, Organic Letters, and Tetrahedron Letters. The objective of this study is to develop a routine methodology for evaluating and comparing journals with a similar scope based on researchers’ immediate needs. The study provides a practical guide to help organic chemists decide where to submit a short article for publication. For initial comparative purposes, general parameters, such as subscription rate, open access availability and article processing charge, field categories, language, maximum page length, citation style, peer-review type, review time, publication frequency, impact factor, journal h-index, acceptance rate, and database coverage were obtained from various online resources. Between 1999 and 2016, a total of 20,675 articles from Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters, 1,732 articles from Letters in Organic Chemistry, 24,889 articles from Organic Letters, and 34,380 articles from Tetrahedron Letters were retrieved from the advanced search option in Web of Science Core Collection (Science Citation Index Expanded). The articles were examined by year, language, country, and organization. The VOSviewer software was employed for an in-depth map analysis of the research topics covered in each journal derived from key terms in article titles. The SciFinder database was used to compare similarities and differences from the articles in each letters journal through Chemical s indexing.