Editorial Journal of Kathmandu Medical College, Vol. 9, No. 4, Issue 34, Oct.-Dec., 2020 Academic journal indexes and metrics: What are they? Rajak A1 , Bajracharya A2 1Ashik Rajak, Editorial Assistant, Journal of Kathmandu Medical College, Kathmandu, Nepal; 2Aliza Bajracharya, Alka Hospital, Lalitpur, Nepal s the journal you work for PubMed indexed?’, ‘Are we of researchers promoting readership. The number of ‘Isubmitting our paper to an indexed journal?’ ‘What open access scholarly journals have increased rapidly in is the journals impact factor?’ are among a few questions the recent times. This has led to scholarly literature being we as researchers and editor of a medical journal come free of charge and the application of the open license for across every once in a while. Answering the question copyright has removed all barriers to copying or reuse in a word is quite simple, but the curiosity that follows - reduced or removed, thus making the conventional right after and the confusion that arises on failing to or non-open access journals less likely to be read and accurately understand what is being said misleads quite inaccessible to many authors in a country like ours. a lot of authors, especially authors who are embarking Having said that, indexed journals will have a higher on their journey in the field of medical research. Having a reputation with a good peer review process, recognized general idea of what ‘indexing’ is, how it works and why peer reviewers - leading to high quality content and is it important is vital as we march into this ever growing updated information in a particular field compared to field. unindexed ones or ones indexed in only a few indexes. Put simply, an ‘index’ is a list of items pulled together As much as the indexes are valued, it is quite interesting for a purpose. Likewise, journal indexes (also called to realize how each of these came about, evolving bibliographic indexes or bibliographic databases) are from the traditional paper based index to become lists of journals, organized by discipline, subject, or type entirely digitalized in the modern era. Now, we proceed of publication1. Even more concisely, an ‘indexed journal’ to learning more about a few well known indexes / is one that has its issues included in a database. And databases, the metrics used and what they represent. yes, one specific journal can be indexed in a number of databases. DIFFERENT JOURNAL INDEXES AND METRICS So that gives an idea why the ‘indexed’ journals are PubMed/ MEDLINE / PMC very attractive to authors and to readers. ‘Indexation’ to These three terms are often seen to be used authors represent recognition, credibility, authenticity in synonymously but there exists a difference between terms of its originality and accessibility to a wide group them. With over 32 million references, PubMed is an indexing service available since 1996 for journals in the Access this article online medical profession, including the MEDLINE database. Website: www.jkmc.com.np DOI: https://doi.org/10.3126/jkmc.v9i4.38089 MEDLINE which can be considered the largest subset HOW TO CITE of PubMed, is the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Rajak A, Bajracharya A. Academic journal indexes and metrics: journal citation database which was started in the 1960s2. What are they? J Kathmandu Med Coll. 2020;9(4):177-181. To index citations, MEDLINE uses the NLM controlled vocabulary, Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), which Address for correspondence sets MEDLINE apart from PubMed and can help limit Dr. Ashik Rajak Editorial Assistant, Journal of Kathmandu Medical College, PubMed search retrieval to MEDLINE citations. An article Kathmandu Medical College Teaching Hospital can appear in PubMed but not be “indexed” in MEDLINE3. P.O. Box number: 21266, Sinamangal, Kathmandu, Nepal E-mail: [email protected] On the other hand, PMC (PubMed Central) is a free archive Copyright © 2020 Journal of Kathmandu Medical College (JKMC) for full-text biomedical and life sciences journal articles ISSN: 2019-1785 (Print), 2091-1793 (Online) launched in 2000. PMC serves as a digital counterpart to the NLM extensive print journal collection; is a repository This work is licensed under a Creative Commons for journal literature deposited by participating Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License. 177 Rajak A et al. publishers, as well as for author manuscripts that have Journal Citation Reports (JCR) began as a publication of been submitted in compliance with the NIH Public Clarivate Analytics (previously known as the Institute for Access Policy and similar policies of other research Scientific Information (ISI)) in 1975 as part of the Science funding agencies. Some PMC journals are also MEDLINE Citation Index (SCI) and the Social Sciences Citation journals4. Index (SSCI)6. The famous ‘impact factor’ invented in the ’60s is a scientometric metric used by JCR and is annually Almost all PubMed content (91%) is indexed in MEDLINE; calculated. however, since the launch of PMC, the percentage Yearly average number of Impact factor (IF) or of PubMed records indexed in MEDLINE has slowly citations articles published in the 5 journal impact factor decreased . last two years in a given journal (JIF) received6 JCR can be accessed online via the Web of Science platform (WOS) - https://mjl.clarivate.com/ home and is known to include publications reviewed by the most widely-cited experts in the world. SCOPUS (ELSEVIER) Primarily known for its prominent domain experts and Figure 1: Composition of PubMed in 20175 peers, Scopus is a bibliographic database run by Elsevier covering many disciplines. The Scopus Journal Analyzer Being around since 1879, Index Medicus was the provides a view of journal performance, by ranking them most comprehensive index of medical scientific using three journal metrics - SJR (SCImago Journal & journal articles. Subsequently over the years, NLM Country Rank), CiteScore and SNIP (Source Normalized created MEDLARS, a bibliographic database, which Impact per Paper)7. became MEDLINE (MEDLARS online) in 1971 when the NLM offered MEDLARS searches “online” to other SCIMAGO JOURNAL AND COUNTRY RANK medical libraries, and remote access to the NLM (SJR) 3 MEDLARS system . SJR is specific to publications indexed in Scopus, and became known as a free substitute to the JCR. Including a EMBASE (EXCERPTA MEDICA DATABASE - greater number of articles compared to JCR, SJR permits ELSEVIER) readers to explore using the Scopus platform, which is a EMBASE is a biomedical and pharmacological paid-for tool8. bibliographic database produced by Elsevier, containing Details the number of links that a journal over 32 million records from 1947 onwards. receives based on the weighted citation of its documents relative to the number of Vaguely understood Impact factor (IF) is considered to be documents published in that year by each an essential tool for investigating the level of influence publication. and impact that a journal has had on the international SJR The citation period is three years (a year research community. It is important to note that all longer compared to JCR) and it can be journals do not have an IF and the IF is updated every calculated on a yearly basis from 1999. year. In addition, IF does not measure the quality of an The calculation disregards citations to article but rather that of the journal in which the article documents published within the journal is published. itself8. Is similar to the IF but is based on a 4-year CiteScore SCIENCE CITATION INDEX EXPANDED (SCIE) period – WEB OF SCIENCE Often misunderstood, the term ‘impact factor’ comes up SJR measures the quality of a journal rather than the striking in between conversations. To understand what it quality of the article and the impact index of a journal is, we go back slightly in time to understand what JCR is. title in any given year may vary and is not a fixed index in SJR. Vol. 9 • No. 4 • Issue 34 • Oct.-Dec. 2020 178 Journal of Kathmandu Medical College Academic journal indexes and metrics: What are they? Eigenfactor scores are intended to give a measure of how Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a likely a journal is to be used, and are thought to reflect community-curated online directory that indexes and how frequently an average researcher would access provides access to high quality, open access, peer- content from that journal9. reviewed journals and data free of charge. It can be accessed at https://doaj.org. QUARTILES In addition to the Impact Factor or Impact Index, Index Copernicus International (ICI) World of Journals rankings of journals in each subject category are divided is a global database dedicated to ensuring that scientific into quartiles by both JCR and SJR7. The journals is each journals are using transparent editorial practices around subject group are divided and ranked into quartiles the world. Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 where journals occupying the first quartile, Q1 are the most prestigious ones with the EBSCO is a full-text coverage database of scholarly highest impact factor or impact index. journals, magazines, and articles. Quartile Index Medicus for South-East Asia Region (IMSEAR) Q1 occupied by the top 25% of journals in the list archives selected publications in health sciences in the Q2 occupied by journals in the 25 to 50% group WHO South-East Asia Region. Q3 occupied by journals in the 50 to 75% group Q4 occupied by journals in the 75 to 100% group With the aim to provide a common platform for ‘repository’ and ‘indexing’ of all Nepalese biomedical DIFFERENCES BETWEEN JCR AND SJR journals, Nepal MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis While being used extensively, it is also important to note and Retrieval System Online) – also known as NepMed the differences between the SJR and JCR. was launched in 2019.