Thomson Scientific Research Articles

More colour to the Journal: new style, new publisher, but still Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle

The beginning of 2015 ushers a new era for the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle (JCSM). The Journal started with its first issue in September 2010, which was published by Springer, the publishing house based in Heidelberg, Germany, founded in 1842. In 2010, there were only 15 submissions to the editorial office, 13 of which were ultimately published online and in print. The number of submissions remained stable over the years 2011 to 2013 at around 43 per year (Figure​(Figure1),1), but underwent a steep increase in 2014 when the journal's first Impact Factor was published by Thomson Scientific as 7.431. At the time of this writing, on February 25, 2015, the Journal has already received 34 submissions since the beginning of January. Even though we are more than delighted by the success of our “baby“ that has now started to walk independently, this fact has increased the editorial workload significantly. We therefore asked Corinna Denecke, who has been part of our clinical research team for several years, to join the editorial office and work together with Monika Diek in answering questions from our authors from all over the world and in handling submissions, an endeavour that embraces checking through the manuscripts with regards to our authors complying with author guidelines. Figure 1 Number of manuscript submissions to the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle by year of publication. Numbers for 2015 are estimated on the number of submissions until February 25, 2015. The beginning of 2015 also marks the start with a new Publishing House – Wiley, a US-based company with more than 1500 scientific journals. JCSM will now be published in full colour, both in print and online. The submission software will remain Editorial Manager as before. The Journal publication mode will change from free access to open access, which also means that we will introduce author publication charges to defray the cost of printing and distribution. The journal will continue its cooperation with the Society on Sarcopenia, Cachexia and Wasting Disorders (SCWD). The editorial team will strive to continue the work for top quality content in cooperation with authors and the new Publisher. Please continue to give us material to publish to make the world of cachexia and sarcopenia a better place for the good of our patients. We promise to continue to cradle and nourish our “baby“ and look forward to seeing it not only walking, but dancing its first waltz.

Editorial: facts, figures and the future

Since the name-change to its current title over 2 decades ago [1], the Journal has seen remarkable development and progress. After hard work, the Journal was accepted and indexed in PubMed in 2008 as an open access journal [2], a factor that is perceived to be important to the journal prosperity [3]. Being accepted by Thomson Scientific and the Web of Science indexing system, the Journal got the inaugural impact factor (IF) in 2010. Landing a first IF at a staggering 2.18 was remarkable indeed and placed the journal among the top 3 world leading journals in the category “emergency medicine” that year. The slight decrease in IF over the two proceeding years was in many ways anticipated – the number of papers accepted and published has gradually increased, levelling off at about 80–90 papers per year. Notably, increasing the denominator negatively influences the IF in relation to number of citations. However, we are confident that this will again turn to the advantage of the journal as we now see a sound inflow of manuscripts at the same time as the number of citations is steadily increasing year on year. It is thus comforting to see a turn on the IF at 1.93 this year. While not quite back at the IF above 2-level (Figure 1), we aim at achieving this goal in the near future.

The Trend of Quality of Publications in Endodontic Surgery: A 10-year Systematic Survey of the Literature

ObjectivesThe aims of the present systematic literature analysis were to evaluate, over a 10-year period, the trend of the proportion of RCT, SR, MA published on endodontic surgery, and to investigate if the impact factor (IF) of the main endodontic Journals correlates with the proportion of RCT, SR, MA they publish. MethodsAn electronic search of the RCT, SR and MA published on the topic “endodontic surgery” from 2001 to 2010 was performed on Medline and Cochrane CENTRAL database using specific search terms combined with Boolean operators. Endodontic Journals impact factor was retrieved by the Thomson Scientific database. The proportion of each study type over the total number of articles on endodontic surgery published per year was estimated. The correlation between the number of high-evidence level studies published on the main endodontic Journals and the IF of such Journals per year was estimated. ResultsFrom a total of 900 articles published in 2001–2010 on endodontic surgery, there were 114 studies of high evidence level. A significant increase of the proportion of either RCT, SR and MA over the years was found. A modest to unclear correlation was found between the Journal IF and the number of high-evidence articles published. ConclusionsThere is a positive trend over the years among researchers in performing studies of good quality in endodontic surgery. The impact factor of endodontic Journals is not consistently influenced by publication of high-evidence level articles.

A bibliometric analysis of diets and breast cancer research.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. The primary aim of this work was to provide an in-depth evaluation of research publications in the field of diets and breast cancer. The impact of economic outcome on national academic productivity was also investigated. Data were retrieved using Pubmed for English-language publications. The search included all research for which articles included words relating to "diets and breast cancer". Population and national income data were obtained from publicly available databases. Impact factors for journals were obtained from Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Scientific). There were 2,396 publications from 60 countries in 384 journals with an impact factor. Among them, 1,652 (68.94%) publications were Original articles. The United States had the highest quantity (51% of total) and highest of mean impact factor (8.852) for publication. Sweden had the highest productivity of publication when adjusted for number of population (6 publications per million population). Publications from the Asian nation increased from 5.3% in 2006 to 14.6% in 2012. The Original article type was also associated with geography (p<0.001; OR=2.183; 95%CI=1.526-3.123), Asian countries produced more proportion of Original articles (82%) than those of rest of the world (67.6%). Diets and breast cancer-associated research output continues to increase annually worldwide including publications from Asian countries. Although the United States produced the most publications, European nations per capita were higher in publication output.

Thinking Beyond the Thomson Reuters “Impact Factor”

Thinking Beyond the Thomson Reuters “Impact Factor”

The impact of extreme observations in citation distributions

This article studies the role of extremely highly cited articles in two instances: the measurement of citation inequality and mean citation rates. Using a data set, acquired from Thomson Scientific, consisting of 4.4 million articles published in 1998–2003 in 22 broad fields with a 5-year citation window, the main results are the following. First, both within each of 22 broad fields and in the all-sciences case, citation inequality is strongly affected by the presence of a handful of extreme observations, particularly when it is measured by citation inequality indices that are very sensitive to citation differences in the upper tail of citation distributions. Second, the impact of extreme observations on citation averages is generally much smaller. The concluding section includes some practical lessons for students of citation inequality and/or users of high-impact indicators.

Three decades of continuous improvement

The aim of this study is to provide a literature review on continuous improvement, analysing the evolution of the field by combining quantitative and qualitative analysis. More than 1000 articles have been reviewed. The articles have been collected through the prestigious database Web of Knowledge (Thomson Scientific). The results show an increasing interest in the field of continuous improvement over the past 30 years. The most discussed topics have been ‘implementation of continuous improvement systems’ and ‘methodologies’. Other findings from the study are: the existence of regional differences in research on continuous improvement, the predominance of the case study and the survey as research methodologies, and the positioning of Total Quality Management and Business Excellence as the lead scientific publication in continuous improvement areas. The present review adds value to other studies on the same topic due to the number of items used (1090), the time period covered (1980–2011), the prestigious database used (Web of Knowledge) and the combination of different analysis (quantitative and qualitative).

Influential Engineers: Where Do They Come From and Where Do They Go? [Trends

The objective of this paper is to examine the intercontinental movement of highly cited researchers (HCRs) in the field of engineering. We use the data on HCRs available from the Thomson Scientific database covering a 20-year period (1981-1999), combined with information collected from the Internet and the researchers themselves, to examine the movement in engineering around the world of the HCRs from birth to their present affiliation. There is a steady movement of engineers from Europe and the rest of the world to the U.S.

Authorship Pattern, Degree of Collaboration and Research Publication Trend among Scientists/Researchers of CSIR-IMTECH, India 1991–2010: A Bibliometric Study

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), India, is the youngest and one of the productive research laboratories in India. It plays an important role in research in the fields of microbiology and biotechnology in India. Due to the importance of IMTECH, we decided to study its academic scientific output in the Web of Science during the years 1991–2010. This paper is an informetric analysis of 902 papers published by the scientists and researchers at the CSIR-IMTECH, Chandigarh, from 1991 to 2010, downloaded from the institute's website as well from science citation index-extended version (Web of Science) of the Thomson Scientific. There is no doubt that collaboration is a common phenomenon in research. This paper examined the collaborative strength and patterns of authorship among the CSIR-IMTECH scientists/researchers, covering a period of 20 years. The results of the data were analysed based on the number of articles published per year, pattern of authorship and the collaborative degree and strength of authors. The study shows that majority of the scientists preferred to publish research papers in joint authorship. Out of 902 articles, 753 (83.48%) were joint works, while only 149 (16.51%) were single-author works. The degree of author's collaboration was also calculated to be 0.83, while the mean numbers of single-author and joint authored articles were 7.45 and 37.65, respectively.

What do university rankings by fields rank? Exploring discrepancies between the organizational structure of universities and bibliometric classifications

University rankings by fields are usually based on the research output of universities. However, research managers and rankings consumers expect to see in such fields a reflection of the structure of their own organizational institution. In this study we address such misinterpretation by developing the research profile of the organizational units of two Spanish universities: University of Granada and Pompeu Fabra University. We use two classification systems, the subject categories offered by Thomson Scientific which are commonly used on bibliometric studies, and the 37 disciplines displayed by the Spanish I-UGR Rankings which are constructed from an aggregation of the former. We also describe in detail problems encountered when working with address data from a top down approach and we show differences between universities structures derived from the interdisciplinary organizational forms of new managerialism at universities. We conclude by highlighting that rankings by fields should clearly state the methodology for the construction of such fields. We indicate that the construction of research profiles may be a good solution for universities for finding out levels of discrepancy between organizational units and subject fields.

Influenza: a scientometric and density-equalizing analysis

BackgroundNovel influenza in 2009 caused by H1N1, as well as the seasonal influenza, still are a challenge for the public health sectors worldwide. An increasing number of publications referring to this infectious disease make it difficult to distinguish relevant research output. The current study used scientometric indices for a detailed investigation on influenza related research activity and the method of density equalizing mapping to make the differences of the overall research worldwide obvious. The aim of the study was to compare scientific effort over the time as well as geographical distribution including the cooperation on national and international level.MethodsTherefore, publication data was retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) of Thomson Scientific. Subsequently the data was analysed in order to show geographical distributions and the development of the research output over the time.The query retrieved 51,418 publications that are listed in WoS for the time interval from 1900 to 2009. There is a continuous increase in research output and general citation activity especially since 1990.ResultsThe identified all in all 51,418 publications were published by researchers from 151 different countries. Scientists from the USA participate in more than 37 percent of all publications, followed by researchers from the UK and Germany with more than five percent. In addition, the USA is in the focus of international cooperation.In terms of number of publications on influenza, the Journal of Virology ranks first, followed by Vaccine and Virology. The highest impact factor (IF 2009) in this selection can be established for The Lancet (30.75). Robert Webster seems to be the most prolific author contributing the most publications in the field of influenza.ConclusionsThis study reveals an increasing and wide research interest in influenza. Nevertheless, citation based-declaration of scientific quality should be considered critically due to distortion by self-citation and co-authorship.

Transparency of research policy and the role of librarians

The current study examines the impact of a research agency on researchers’ behaviour in the context of science policy and the decision to use an existing Library Union catalogue system – Co-operative Online Bibliographic System and Services – as the basis for a research data evaluation. Central and Eastern Europe countries, new European Union member states, represent an ideal laboratory to study the evolution of research organisation since changes are more rapid and profound than in Western European countries. That is why the effects of implementing the transparency of research results on a national level, in Slovenia, are presented through a case study of the Slovenian Research Agency. Thomson Scientific Web of Science citation databases have been used as a starting point for conducting publication analyses after the introduction of new Slovenian Current Research Information System. The findings suggest that transparency, if required by the research funding organisation per se, offers a change and can steer the growth of publications containing research results, as researchers generally see transparency as a positive element which promotes their work. It is also an important promotion of the work done by librarians in research and academic libraries, as they are responsible for the data. This is in line with the suggestion that library and information professionals should seize the opportunity to have an influence on government policy making in providing bibliometric expertise regarding research evaluation (Oppenheim, 2008).

Impact Factor of the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery increased to 2.674

As revealed in the recently published Journal Citation Report 2012 [1], the impact factor (IF) of EJCTS has again increased, from 2.550 in 2011, to 2.674 in 2012, continuing the trend observed over the last eight years (Fig. 1). This underscores the great development of EJCTS since the first issue was published in 1987 [2]. Another welcome piece of news is the first award of an IF (1.112) to Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery (ICVTS), sister journal to EJCTS. [3]. The journal “family” of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS) EJCTS, ICVTS, and MMCTS (the Multimedia Manual of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, a premier online manual of cardiovascular and thoracic surgical procedures, with Marko Turina as Editor-in-Chief [4]) therefore continues to consolidate its powerful position in the field of cardiothoracic scientific publishing. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, who founded the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in 1960. Since 1975, IFs for Journals indexed in the Journal Citation Report ( JCR) have been calculated once a year; the ISI Web of Knowledge has indexed more than 11000 scientific Journals. The ISI was acquired by Thomson Scientific and Healthcare in 1992 (Thomson ISI) and now belongs to the Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters. The IF measures the average number of citations to articles in a scientific journal from the previous two years. It is calculated (e.g. for the year 2012) according to the following formula:

Annals of Occupational Hygiene Performance, 2012

Submission and publication. In 2012, we had 234 submissions, an almost 7% decrease from the record in 2011. However, the overall trend in recent years has been a significant increase in submissions, and in response to this, our rejection rate has also increased to ~55%. A high rejection rate is needed to ensure the continued high level of scholarship in the published product, although the journal will continue to consider a possible expansion of the number of issues from the current 9 per year to 10 or possibly 12. In 2012, we published 95 research papers, reviews, and commentaries. Handling time. For papers received between October 2011 and September 2012, the median time to send a first decision to authors, including peer review, was 42 days, and 85% of first decisions were sent within 72 days. The median time from acceptance to publication online is ~6 weeks. Access. The provisional figure for the number of institutions paying for access to the whole journal has decreased by ~3.5% compared with the same figure in 2011. However, 1602 institutions in developing countries have registered for free or deeply discounted access. The number of downloads of full texts of papers downloaded from the online edition is the equivalent of >1300 each working day. This continues to increase as people generally convert to online access. Sources. The leading sources of submissions, by address of first author, were USA (45 papers), UK (22), Germany (21), France (14), Canada (13), Sweden (12), and Italy (11). US submissions were substantially down from 2011, whereas a marked increase was seen from Germany. The regional distributions were Europe 54% (12% up on 2011), North America 25% (8% down from 2011), East Asia and Australasia 12%, and the rest of the world 9%. At 21%, the fraction of papers submitted from outside Europe and North America was slightly down since the mid-2000s, but still showing increased interest in publication from the developing economies. Journal impact. The Thomson Scientific Journal Impact Factor (JIF) has many limitations as a true indicator of impact in the real world, as discussed in a commentary in 2008 (Ogden and Bartley, 2008). It is, however, widely used. Our JIF for 2011 (announced in the middle of 2012) was 1.95, slightly lower than the record level for the previous year. Processing. The Chief Editor and team of 13 Assistant Editors coordinated the collection of ~450 reviews from ~325 reviewers. Corresponding information for 2011 is given by Ogden (2012).

Impact Factor and Mathematics : A Debate

1. Overview The Impact Factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure of the citations to science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the importance of a journal to its field. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfied, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information, now part of Thomson, a large world wide US-based publisher. Impact factors are calculated each year by Thomson Scientific for those journals which it indexes, and the factor and indices are published in Journal Citation Report (JCR). The measures to calculate the impact factor apply only to journals, not individual articles or individual scientists. The relative number of citations an individual article receives is better viewed as citation impact. It is, however, possible to measure the impact factor of the journals in which a specific person has published articles. This use is widespread, but controversial. Eugene Garfield warns about the misuse in evaluating individuals because there is a wide variation from article to article within a single journal. On the other hand, impact factors have a huge, but controversial, influence on the way published scientific research is preserved and evaluated. A citation index is an index of citations between publications, which allows the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier document. The first citation indices were legal citators such as Shepard’s Citations (1873). In 1960, Eugene Garfiled’s Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) introduced the first citation index published in academic journals, starting with the Science Citation Index (SCI). There are two publishers of general – purpose academic citation indices, those are available to libraries by subscription : ISI is now a part of Thomson Scientific, Elsevier publishes Scopus, available online only. Although citation indices were originally designed for information retrieval purpose yet they are increasing used for biblometrics and other, involving research evaluation. Citation data is the basis of the popular journal impact factor. Scientrometrics, a term advented by Vasily Nalimov, is a large body of literature on citation analysis. The field of citation index brought revolution with the advent of SCI, which (as per information available) now covers literature from the year 1900 on. One may, for leading journals of the field, see Scientometrics and the Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology (ASIST). The Web of Science provides access to current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from over 8,500 of the most high impact research journals in the world. The benefits are : you can find who is citing your research and the impact factor your work is having; unveil the seminal research of an important theory or concept; you may follow the path and direction of today’s hottest concepts; you may determine if a theory has been confirmed, changed or improved; you may locate relevant articles missed through a topic or subject search, among many more. Web of science helps finding research collaborators internationally.

The role of editorial material in bibliometric research performance assessments

In this study, the possibilities to extend the basis for research performance exercises with editorial material are explored. While this document type has been traditionally not considered as an important type of scientific communication in research performance assessment procedures, there is a perception from researchers that editorial materials should be considered as relevant document types as important sources for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. In a number of these cases, some of the mentioned editorial materials are actually `highly cited'. This lead to a thorough scrutiny of editorials or editorial material over the period 1992---2001, for all citation indexes of Thomson Scientific. The relevance of editorial materials through three quantitative bibliometric characteristics of scientific publications, namely page length, number of references, and the number of received citations, are thoroughly analyzed.

The Citation Merit of Scientific Publications

We propose a new method to assess the merit of any set of scientific papers in a given field based on the citations they receive. Given a field and a citation impact indicator, such as the mean citation or the -index, the merit of a given set of articles is identified with the probability that a randomly drawn set of articles from a given pool of articles in that field has a lower citation impact according to the indicator in question. The method allows for comparisons between sets of articles of different sizes and fields. Using a dataset acquired from Thomson Scientific that contains the articles published in the periodical literature in the period 1998–2007, we show that the novel approach yields rankings of research units different from those obtained by a direct application of the mean citation or the -index.

Immunotoxicity, Flow Cytometry, and Chemoinformatics: Review, Bibliometric Analysis, and New QSAR Model of Drug Effects Over Macrophages

Bibliometric methods for analyzing and describing research output have been supported internationally by the establishment and operation of organizations such as the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) or Scimago Ranking Institutions (SRI). This study provides an overview of the research performance of major World countries in the field cytokines, Citometric bead assays and QSAR, the most important journals in which they published their research articles, and the most important academic institutions publishing them. The analysis was based on Thomson Scientific's Web of Science (WoS), and Scimago group calculated bibliometric indicators of publication activity and actual citation impact. Studying the time period 2005-2010, and shows the visibility of Medicinal Chemistry Bioorganic in this thematic noting that the visibility of a journal must take into account not only the impact factor, but the prestige, popularity and representativeness of the theme that addresses the same making a comprehensive assessment of bibliometric indicators.

Thirty-seven years of archives of environmental protection

Abstract Archives of Environmental Protection is the oldest Polish scientifi c journal regarding environmental engineering and protection. It has been published by the Institute of Environmental Engineering of PAS in Zabrze since 1975. The Committee on Environmental Engineering of PAS became its co-publisher in 2011. The quarterly publishes original articles (earlier, also announcements) concerning broadly understood areas of the environmental engineering and protection. The subjects include: air, land and water protection; technologies of fl ue gases, soil and wastewater treatment; transformations and transportation of pollutants in the environment; measurement techniques used in research and engineering as well as environmental monitoring. The published articles also focus on the reclamation and management of derelict lands, environmental management and other questions related to the environmental engineering and protection. The journal has been abstracted by Thomson Scientific since 2006 in the following databases: Science Citation Index Expanded, Biological Abstracts and BIOSIS Previews. Moreover, the journal was given the impact factor (IF) in 2010. The following article presents statistical data as well as a brief history and description of the journal.

Is The Diabetes Educator Better Off Now Compared to Last Year?

I t is an election year, and we have been bombarded with the question “Are we better off now than we were 4 years ago?” The question revolves around national politics and has become a mantra throughout the campaign season. The answer to the question varies considerably depending on whom you talk with or ask. However, if you ask the question “Is The Diabetes Educator better off now compared to last year?” the answer is definitely yes! As we come to the end of 2012, TDE continues to be a strong member benefit with the help of our publishing partner, Sage Publications. We have had a number of significant successes this year, including an increased use of marketing strategies (social media) along with another increase in impact factor. In 2012, Sage has somewhat changed how it markets and sells journals like TDE. Sage works with authors, readers, and subscribers of TDE online rather than through direct mail pieces. Almost all marketing efforts are done electronically through online advertising, targeted e-mail campaigns, newsletters, and social media. This is not to say that printed materials (eg, conference flyers) no longer serve an important purpose; rather, reliance on printed material is diminishing with time as it becomes increasingly ineffective. Use of blogs, Facebook, podcasts, Twitter, and other digital-type resources are becoming available and more popular. Social media continues to develop at a rapid pace. The latest social media developments—including user trends, new platforms, and how other journals use these technologies—are being monitored. Facebook is likewise becoming a major tool, with researchers also using Twitter to ask colleagues questions or share their latest research. Blogs are also becoming available to connect new readers and sometimes the general public. Sage continues to monitor how people arrive at TDE content. It has been noted that more and more references to TDE come from Wikipedia. As a result, TDE now has a homepage that contains bibliographical information plus links to TDE. In all instances, Sage is continually investing in ways to disseminate content and build on viable marketing channels for TDE. As an example of how Sage has been creative in meeting the needs of members, in this issue of TDE, the article “Development and Evaluation of the Decide to Move! Physical Activity Educational Video” has a link to the video described in the article. Again this past year, TDE is ranked in the Endocrinology and Metabolism as well as Public, Environmental, and Occupational Health category of the Thomson Scientific Citation Reports (formerly, Institute for Scientific Information) with an impact factor of 1.959. This represents a 0.6–percentage point increase in impact factor over last year (1.947 in 2010; 1.873 in 2009). An impact factor is one measure of quality of content and number of citations associated with a particular journal. We are pleased with the progress that AADE (TDE) and Sage have made in 2012, and we believe that we are better off now compared to where we were last year. We look forward to 2013 and encourage members to contact the Editorial Office with any comments, suggestions, or recommendations for improving TDE. Let us know if there are particular topics you would like to see covered in future issues. We appreciate your observations and suggestions. If I can answer any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, College of Nursing, 285 Old Westport Road, North Dartmouth, MA 02747; phone: (508) 999-8586; e-mail: jfain@umassd.edu.