Abstract
The scientific foundation for the criticism on the use of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in evaluations of individual researchers and their publications was laid between 1989 and 1997 in a series of articles by Per O. Seglen. His basic work has since influenced initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Leiden Manifesto for research metrics, and The Metric Tide review on the role of metrics in research assessment and management. Seglen studied the publications of only 16 senior biomedical scientists. We investigate whether Seglen’s main findings still hold when using the same methods for a much larger group of Norwegian biomedical scientists with more than 18,000 publications. Our results support and add new insights to Seglen’s basic work.
Highlights
The average citation impact of a journal is only a weak predictor of the citation impact of individual publications in that journal because, among other aspects, article citedness tends to be highly skewed among publications [1, 2]
First came the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment [3], which was initiated by the American Society for Cell Biology and has more than 13,000 signees across the world
We investigate three questions concerning the skewness of article citedness, the correlation between article citedness and journal impact, and the possible benefit for citedness of publishing in a journal with higher impact, by using Seglen’s methods on a much larger set of data than he was able to establish thirty years ago
Summary
The average citation impact of a journal is only a weak predictor of the citation impact of individual publications in that journal because, among other aspects, article citedness tends to be highly skewed among publications [1, 2]. The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is widely used for the evaluation of individual researchers and their articles. This practice has recently influenced in a series of well-organized reactions from scientific communities. First came the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment [3], which was initiated by the American Society for Cell Biology and has more than 13,000 signees across the world. A few months later appeared The Metric Tide report [5], which provided the Higher Education Funding Council for England with an independent review on the role of metrics in research assessment and management
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