The effect of citations on the significance of decimal places in the computation of journal impact factors

Journal impact factors (JIF) are computed by Thomson Reuters to three decimal places. Some authors have cast doubt on the validity of the third decimal place in JIFs. In this paper I present a new approach to evaluate the significance of decimal places in JIFs. To do so, two modified JIFs were computed by adding or removing one citation to the number used by Thomson Reuters to compute the JIF for journals listed in the 2008 Journal Citation Report. The rationale is that one citation is the minimum amount of impact that can be observed and analyzed. Next, the modified JIFs were compared with the original JIF to identify the decimal place that changed as consequence of adding or removing one citation. The results suggest that for about two-third of journals, the number of places used by Thomson Reuters to compute JIFs can be considered appropriate for the most part.     

Database tomography for technical intelligence: Comparative roadmaps of the research impact assessment literature and the journal of the American Chemical Society

This paper shows how Database Tomgraphy can be used to derive technical intelligence from the published literature. Database Tomography is a patented system for analyzing large amounts of textual computerized material. It includes algorithms for extracting multi-word phrase frequencies and performing phrase proximity analyses. Phrase frequency analysis provides the pervasive themes of a database, and the phrase proximity analysis provides the relationships among the pervasive themes, and between the pervasive themes and sub-themes. One potential application of Database Tomography is to obtain the thrusts and interrelationships of a technical field from papers published in the literature within that field. This paper provides applications of Database Tomography to analyses of both the non-technical field of Research Impact Assessment (RIA) and the technical field of Chemistry. A database of relevant RIA articles was analyzed to produce characteristics and key features of the RIA field. The recent prolific RIA authors, the journals prolific in RIA papers, the prolific institutions in RIA, the prolific keywords specified by the authors, and the authors whose works are cited most prolifically as well as the particular papers/journals/institutions cited most prolifically, are identified. The pervasive themes of RIA are identified through multi-word phrase of the database. A phrase proximity analysis of the database shows the relationships among the pervasive themes, and the relationships between the pervasive themes and subthemes. A similar process was applied to Chemistry, with the exception that the database was limited to one year's issues of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Wherever possible, the RIA and Chemistry results were compared. Finally, the conceptual use of Database Tomography to help identify promising research directions was discussed.     

Characteristics of journal impact factors: The effects of uncitedness and citation distribution on the understanding of journal impact factors

Summary In this study, journal impact factors play a central role. In addition to this important bibliometric indicator, which evolves around the average impact of a journal in a two-year timeframe, related aspects of journal impact measurement are studied. Aspects like the output volume, the percentage of publications not cited, and the citation frequency distribution within a set timeframe are researched, and put in perspective with the 'classical' journal Impact Factor. In this study it is shown that these aspects of journal impact measurement play a significant role, and are strongly inter-related. Especially the separation between journals on the basis of the differences in output volume seems to be relevant, as can be concluded from the different results in the analysis of journal impact factors, the degree of uncitedness, and the share of a journal its contents above or below the impact factor value.     

Journal ranking by selective impact. New method based on SDI results and journal impact factors

Selecting an appropriate set of scientific journals which best meets the users' needs and the dynamics of science requires usage of weight parameters by which journals can be ranked. Previous methods are based on the simple counting of relevant articles, or hits in SDI runs. The new method proposed combines hit numbers in SDI runs and journals' impact factors to a weight parameter called Selective Impact. The experimental results obtained show that ranking by Selective Impact leads to a higher quality of the conclusions to be drawn from journal rank distributions.     

Comments on the paper of J. M. Campanario: The effect of citations on the significance of decimal places in the computation of journal impact factors

We give mathematical explanations of some empirical results obtained by Campanario in Scientometrics 99(2):289–298, (2014).     

Electronic Publishing and the Journals of the American Chemical Society

The American Chemical Society is developing a number of initiatives that implement emerging electronic technologies in order to provide a broad range of products and services to members and subscribers. Examples of products currently available, or under development, for access via the World Wide Web include supporting information for journals, electronic ads, color graphics and entire journals. Other activities employ e-mail, CD-ROMs, and softcopy text.     

Ranking serials in oceanography: An analysis based on the Indian contributions and their citations

An analysis of serials preferred and cited in various communications by the Indian oceanographers during 1963 to 1992 is presented. A shift in preference of serials from general sciences to oceanography (interdisciplinary) and to core subject in oceanography is noticed. The contributions to Indian serials showed a decrease. The implications of this trend are discussed. The rank list of serials cited by Indian oceanographers was correlated with the rank list of serials cited at international level. A negative correlation with a marginal difference of−0.214 is observed between these two rank lists. This difference is attributed to studies from different geographical areas in these two rank sets. Bradford graphs for all datasets, but one, showed typical Bradford-Leimkuhler curves with or without clear Groos droops. Further research is required to explain this exceptional curve. A country-wise analysis of the serials preferred as well as cited in communications give a clear picture on the shift during the period of study. English is considered as thelingua franca by Indian ocanographers.     

A comparison of overall and sub-area journal influence: The case of the accounting literature

In most scientific disciplines, a number of divergent and often highly specialized research areas are examined, which is reflected in substantial differences among journal scopes. Using the accounting literature as an example, we argue that this diversity in scopes should be considered when assessing journal influence. Concretely, we examine a citation-based structural influence measure for a sample of 41 accounting journals. Next, we identify sub-areas in the accounting literature and we explore journal influence in these sub-areas. Our results clearly demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between overall and sub-area influence. In addition, we show that sub-areas should be identified using a fuzzy clustering procedure.     

Informetrics of Scientometrics abstracts: a rhetorical move analysis of the research abstracts published in Scientometrics journal

Scientometrics - The research abstracts have significant functions in the process of conveying information about each research. This is much important in the scientometrics field due to the...     

Exploring the relationships between altmetric counts and citations of papers in different academic fields based on co-occurrence analysis

Scientometrics - Altmetrics is an emerging method for observing academic communication. Many researchers have explored the relationships between altmetric counts and citations through correlation...     

Assessing the quality of scholarly journals in Linguistics:An alternative to citation-based journal impact factors

Methods were developed to allow quality assessment of academic research in linguistics in allsub-disciplines. Data were obtained from samples of respondents from Flanders, the Netherlands,as well as a world-wide sample, evaluated journals, publishers, and scholars. Journals andpublishers were ranked by several methods. First, we weighted the number of times journals orpublishers were ranked as 'outstanding', 'good', or 'occasionally/not at all good'. To reduce theinfluence of unduly positive or negative biases of respondents, the most extreme ratings weretrimmed. A second weight reflects the (international) visibility of journals and publishers. Here,journals or publishers nominated by respondents from various countries or samples received agreater weight than journals or publishers nominated by respondents from one country or onesample only. Thirdly, a combined index reflects both quality and international visibility. Its use isillustrated on the output of scholars in linguistics. Limitations and potentials for application ofbibliometric methods in output assessments are discussed.     

A comparative analysis of publication activity and citation impact based on the core literature in bioinformatics

A novel subject-delineation strategy has been developed for the retrieval of the core literature in bioinformatics. The strategy combines textual components with bibliometric, citation-based techniques. This bibliometrics-aided search strategy is applied to the 1980–2004 annual volumes of the Web of Science. Retrieved literature has undergone a structural as well as quantitative analysis. Patterns of national publication activity, citation impact and international collaboration are analysed for the 1990s and the new millennium.     

Using the appearance of citations in full text on author co-citation analysis

As a frequently used method of depicting scientific intellectual structures, author co-citation analysis (ACA) has been applied to many domains. However, only count-based information is involved as the input of ACA, which is not sufficiently informative for knowledge representations. This article catches several metadata in full text of citing papers but not aims at content-level information, which increases the amount of information input to ACA without increasing computational complexity a lot. We propose a new method by involving information including the number of mentioned times in a citing paper and the number of context words in a citing sentence. We combine these pieces of information into the traditional ACA and compare the results between ACA and the proposed approach by using factor analysis, network analysis, and MDS-measurement. The result of our empirical study indicates that compared with the traditional ACA, the proposed method shows a better clustering performance in visualizations and reveals more details in displaying intellectual structures.     

Quality is in the eye of the beholder? An evaluation of impact factors and perception of journal prestige in the UK

A number of proxy measures have been used as indicators of journal quality. The most recent and commonly employed are journal impact factors. These measures are somewhat controversial, although they are frequently referred to in establishing the impact of published journal articles. Within psychology, little is known about the relationship between the ‘objective’ impact factors of journals and the ‘subjective’ ratings of prestige and perceived publishing difficulty amongst academics. In order to address this, a cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted in the UK to investigate research activity and academics’ views of journals within three fields of psychology; cognitive, health and social. Impact factors for each journal were correlated with individual academic’s perceptions of prestige and publishing difficulty for each journal. A number of variables pertaining to the individual academic and their place of work were assessed as predictors of these correlation values, including age, gender, institution type, and a measure of departmental research activity. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to perceptions of journal prestige and publishing difficulty, higher education in general and the assessment of research activity within academic institutions.     

The impact of preprints in Library and Information Science: an analysis of citations,usage and social attention indicators

Scientometrics - The objective of this paper is to explore the impact of preprints in scholarly and broader scientific communication. In particular, the following four indicators are used to...     

Surviving bad times: The role of citations,self-citations and numbers of citable items in recovery of the journal impact factor after at least four years of continuous decreases

We studied the influence of the number of citations, the number of citable items and the number of journal self-citations on increases in the impact factor (IF) in 123 journals from the Journal Citation Reports database in which this scientometric indicator had decreased during the previous four years. In general, we did not find evidence that abuse of journal self-citations contributed to the increase in the impact factor after several years of decreases.     

Representation of a complex structure measure for social groups and its application to the structure of citations in a journal

A complex structure measure for social groups was established with a view to reflecting the degree of interaction within a social group. The quantitative degrees of relationship between two group members each and their distributions within the group are considered. These distributions can be characterized quantitatively on different hierarchical levels to which a specific meaning can be attributed. The complex structure measure is a combination of measures for the different hierarchical levels. A stratification of scientists based on the number of publications in a journal is reflected in the results obtained by the complex structure measure. Specific information is provided both by the complex structure measure and by the measure on different levels.