Importance Of Impact Factor Research Articles

Smoke, Mirrors and Impact Factor: How Management Scholars Undermine a Managerial Metric

We analyze leading management journals of the Academy of Management (AMJ;AMR;AMLE;AMP;AMD as well as JOM), collecting and analyzing information on the managerial research assessment tool of impact factor (IF) during two time periods – 1997-2005 and 2006-2019. We capture the changing nature of journal strategies, examining number of references, self-citation, and citation cartel performance. Our study shows that one outcome of the recent focus on IF metrics is a general increase in the number of references used, resulting in a corresponding IF gain not predicated on academic merit. In essence, editors and authors are responding to the growing importance of IF by ‘gaming’ the system thus undermining the impact of institutional attempts to measure academic research performance.

Reviews

Reviews

Journal impact factors and the influence of age and number of citations.

Journal impact factors and the influence of age and number of citations.

Impact Factor and Science Publishing: What Impact Should It Have on Selecting Journals in Which We Publish?

A year or so ago, I published an editorial about citations. In part, because young colleagues had started the process of citing reviews as primary citations rather than citing the original work. In addition, the fact that in the world of Google and other search engines, we have moved into cite by title or by the contents of the abstract without ever immersing ourselves in the nuances (ok, let’s just say reading) of the paper. However, citation of our work is important because our intellectual bank account is our published work and our value is based upon how this work is perceived (or cited) by others in our field. Yet, another important change in the little society we call science is the inappropriate use of Impact Factor (IF) to perceive value of people, of work, and of journals. So I ask you to consider a few questions. Has the use of IF evolved past what was ever intended by its inventor? What role, if any, should a journal’s IF have on whether we choose to publish our work in it? Should IF be used to evaluate the quality of individual work published in any given journal? Should IF be used to evaluate the performance of a faculty or whether a certain person should be hired over another person? Should IF be used to determine who gets a grant and who does not? Of course these questions can go on and on, but why do I raise them? Because it appears that we have collectively fallen into a deep love affair with IF and we run the risk of passing on this ill-advised affair to our students. In my Science Ethics course (BIMD 516), amongst the many topics taught on ethics, I teach a session about the rules, written and unwritten, regarding publishing one’s work in the scientific literature. One important lecture topic is about the value of IF and what this number means and what it does not mean. Unfortunately, I find graduate students’ perception of the importance of IF is much different than many of my colleagues who serve as their mentors and advisors. Similarly, I find that my colleagues, both here at the University of North Dakota and elsewhere have a false perception of what IF means and its ill-conceived use in evaluating individuals’ published work or as a measure of journal worthiness. To put it into perspective, IF is a population statistic that reflects how many citations of a journal’s papers published over a two-year period receive during the subsequent year. That is, citations referencing citable material published in 2012 and 2013 will be the bases for a journal’s IF in 2014. Or ‘‘The annual Journal Citation Reports impact factor is a ratio between citations and recent citable items published: a journal’s impact factor is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years’’. Hence, it is not an indicator of potential future performance for any published paper nor is it an individual statistic, but rather a population statistic based upon the general population of what has been published. Simply put, an IF of 2 suggests two citations on average for each paper published over that 2 year period in the following year. So, is a journal with an IF of 2 half the quality of a journal with an IF of 4? Is it one-quarter of the value of a journal with an IF of 8? Alternatively, does publishing in a journal with an IF of 2 mean that my work E. J. Murphy (&) Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Therapeutics, University of North Dakota, 501 N. Columbia Rd., Grand Forks, ND 58202-9037, USA e-mail: eric.murphy@med.und.edu 1 ‘‘Introducing the Impact Factor’’ sourced from Thomson Reuters: http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/academic/ impact_factor/.

Dispelling the myths surrounding the Research Excellence Framework

In a recent discussion with a colleague from the UK, we learned that scientists in his department are currently under pressure to submit their work to the highest impact journal they can in order to have the greatest impact in the upcoming Research Exercise Framework (REF) for the UK’s academic units. Unfortunately, he pointed out that, under these constraints, RCM – as well as JASMS, JMS, IJMS and EJMS – does not fit the journal profile to which they were asked to publish. Instead, Analytical Chemistry and similar multidisciplinary journals with higher impact factors are favoured by the university. For us at RCM, this is an interesting and somewhat frustrating situation. Does it mean, for mass spectrometry, that articles from the UKmay be re-routed to more generalist journals such as JACS and Analytical Chemistry rather than the core mass spectrometry journals? And if that is the case, how are authors going to pitch (or reformat) their mass spectrometry articles, so a generalist journal will accept them? Let’s be honest about this, most of the typical RCM, JASMS, JMS, IJMS or EJMS articles will not find favor with editors of generalist analytical chemistry journals because of the very specialized nature of the research. Of course, this is exactly the reason for the existence of community journals such as RCM and other mass spectrometry journals. Interestingly, among the many articles and opinions on the subject of ‘impact’ assessment, we came across the following statement by Zwahlen et al. who make particular reference to the UK situation, “We share. . . concern about the epidemic of impactitis, which appears to rage in Germany and elsewhere. One country which appears to be to some extent immune against this disease is the United Kingdom”. Well, this immunity certainly does not appear to be present in every academic institution in the UK. The above situation has prompted us to take a closer look at the importance of impact factors, modern research assessments tools and the factors and interactions that ultimately determine the ’impact’ of generalist, multidisciplinary versus community journals, with particular reference to the upcoming REF exercise.

Literatura científica de autores españoles sobre análisis de citas y factor de impacto en Biomedicina (1981-2005)

This paper analyses the development of Spanish research literature in the field of citation analysis and impact factor (IF) in biomedicine over the period 1981-2005. Bibliometric methods and social network analysis were used to examine papers indexed in the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-Expanded), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), MEDLINE, Indice Medico Espanol (IME) and Indice de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (ISOC) databases. 184 papers were identified, 79.89% of which were original research articles. Only four of these papers had been published before the 1990s. The mid 1990s saw a remarkable increase in the number of papers published (8-14 papers/year) with the highest productivity being reached from 2002 onwards (14-25 papers/year). The IME and SCI-Expanded/SSCI databases were those recording the largest numbers of papers, both in absolute (67.93% and 40.76 respectively) and singularity terms (42.39% and 21.74% respectively). The detected papers were published in 76 Biomedical and Documentation journals (82.06% and 15.22% respectively). The most productive authors were identified along with the main co-authorships and institutional collaboration networks operating in the field. These results are related to the importance of impact factor at both national and international level.

Academic anesthesiologists' views on the importance of the impact factor of scientific journals: a North American and European survey.

To investigate the views of North American and European anesthesiologists on the value of the impact factor (IF). Four hundred thirty-eight anesthesiologists in Canada, the United States of America (USA), and Europe were polled about the importance of the IF regarding hiring, promotions, funding of research and to express their personal views. IF of a candidate's publications is a criterion in 38% of academic appointments in Canada and USA vs 81% in Europe (P <0.0001). The importance of IF to obtain funding is greater in Europe (46%) than in North America (17%) (P <0.0001). Twenty-three percent and 50% of Canadian and American anesthesiologists respectively believe that IF affects financial support (P=0.0389). European anesthesiologists value the IF more than the North Americans (67% vs 31%, P <0.0001). Forty-five percent, 67%, and 56% of the Canadian, American and European anesthesiologists respectively estimate that IF reflects journal quality. Sixty-four percent of anesthesiologists in North America vs 81% in Europe (P=0.0175) pursue to publish in high IF journals. Eighty-six percent, 85% and 90% of the Canadian, American and European anesthesiologists believe that the IF of a journal can be manipulated. Finally, 79%, 67%, and 81% of the Canadian, American, and European anesthesiologists believe that IF should be improved but 33%, 35%, and 30% believe that it should be abandoned. IF for academic appointments and funding is more important in Europe than in North America. More than 50% of anesthesiologists agree that IF needs to be improved.