Revista Portuguesa de Pneumología ISSN: 0873-2159 [email protected] Sociedade Portuguesa de Pneumologia Portugal Donato, Helena Understanding Journal Evaluation and Strategies to Increase Impact Revista Portuguesa de Pneumología, vol. 22, núm. 2, marzo-abril, 2016, pp. 67-69 Sociedade Portuguesa de Pneumologia Lisboa, Portugal Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=169747609001 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Documento descargado de http://www.elsevier.pt el 12/10/2016. Copia para uso personal, se prohíbe la transmisión de este documento por cualquier medio o formato. Rev Port Pneumol. 2016;22(2):67---69 www.revportpneumol.org EDITORIAL Understanding Journal Evaluation and Strategies to Increase Impact Compreender a Avaliac¸ão das Revistas e Estratégias para Aumentar o Impacto Journal metrics mania started over 50 years ago with impact For example, in the latest edition of JCR the highest journal 1 factor. IF in Oncology is 144.80 and in General Internal Medicine In 1955, Eugene Garfield, an American bibliometrician, is 55.873, however in the category Respiratory System is suggested that the number of references could be used to 12.996 (American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care measure the impact of a journal, but the term ‘‘Impact Medicine), in Allery 11.476 and in Otorhinolaryngology is 2 Factor’’ (IF) was only introduced in 1963. This led to 3.761. This means that the best journals in specialized areas the publication of Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The JCR such as the mentioned never achieve the journal IF of gen- produces yearly impact factor lists that are grouped by spe- eral medicine journals. ciality and cover the world’s most frequently cited peer Beyond that, journals dedicated to basic science have 2 reviewed journals. higher citation rates than journals devoted to clinical sub- As defined by its owner Thomson Reuters, the JCR jects. offers systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the Since its introduction in 1995 IF gained increasing popu- world’s leading journals, with quantifiable, statistical infor- larity as a measure of the quality of scientific journals. The mation based on citation data. IF is an accepted proxy measure of the quality of a journal How is the impact factor defined and calculated? all over the world; it remains the most popular metric by 1 The formula used is: IF = A/B which to judge the performance of a scientific journal. A = total number of citations of journal articles during the The IF is not the perfect metric and as previously men- 2 years before the year considered. tioned has its own limitations. Nonetheless, the journal IF B = total number of items published during the 2 years have become increasingly popular as a substitute for sci- before the year considered. entific quality, and it is often recognized as a symbol of 1 The primary utility of IF was to improve the manage- scientific prestige and relevance. But, as Garfield said the ment and selection of library journal collections. In market impact factor is not an absolute measure of the quality of a research IF provides quantitative evidence for editors and journal, but of its influence and never intended to serve as 3 publishers for positioning their journals in relation to the an indicator of the influence of individual papers. competition with others in the same subject category. Currently, it is used to not only evaluate and compare When Garfield first launched his idea of a citation index journals but also to assess the scientific performance of for scientific publications he probably could not have dreamt authors, institutions, countries. It is a mistake to use IF as a the immense impact the instrument would have. In spite proxy measure of article quality or author prestige. of some limitations JCR becomes a legitimate authority for IF is still used by funding agencies, universities, policy- ranking scientific journals. makers to: One of the main limitations of the IF is the short time • frame of 2 years. Citations of articles older than 2 years do Select candidates for a particular position • not contribute to IF. It is a disadvantage to some subject cat- Select recipients of grants • egories where it usually takes more than one year to collect Promote • citations. Award • The IF is directly related to the area of research. The Establish scientific collaborations • larger the scope of the journal, the higher the journal IF. Select editor for journals http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rppnen.2016.02.001 2173-5115/© 2016 Sociedade Portuguesa de Pneumologia. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Documento descargado de http://www.elsevier.pt el 12/10/2016. Copia para uso personal, se prohíbe la transmisión de este documento por cualquier medio o formato. 68 EDITORIAL • Determine the scientific output in a ranking Authors must be able to recognize and avoid publishing in • And many other. journal indexed in such illegitimate impact factor websites. All authors goal is to publish in impact journals, prefer- Can the IF be ignored when assessing the work of oth- ably high impact journals. However many medical journals ers? The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) is one reject more than 80% of the manuscripts they receive, 4 attempt to do so. DORA recommends that the IF should making rejection the biggest barrier to publication in high not be used to evaluate an author and remembers that the impact factor journals. IF is a bibliometric measure to be used to assess the influ- It seems obvious that more citation listed, the higher the ence of a journal. DORA was published to spark discussion IF of the journal. And there are various ethical strategies an of alternatives to the use of IF for the evaluation of individ- editor can try to increase citations and improve de impact 4 ual authors in hiring, promotion and funding decisions. The of their journal, which can help to increase IF and other basic message of DORA is that the scientific content of an citation metrics. article is much more important than the IF of the journal in 4 which it appears. We must remember that several medical - The best way to improve IF is to publish high quality arti- areas read but do not write so they may benefit from arti- cles, but attract high quality manuscripts is not an easy cles without citing them. A journal with a low impact factor task particularly for journals with an already low impact can contain highly valuable content that will impact on the factor.5 1,4 practice of reader. There are ongoing efforts to develop better scores in Other ways are: attempt to find a better method that would reflect jour- nals contribution to science. Several proposals of new 5 alternatives of bibliometric measures have appeared. - Journals can publish invited content from leading fig- The extent of use, however, still seems to weigh in on ures in the field, guidelines, methodologies, special IF’s side. issues on-topical subjects, debates on currently relevant SCImago Journal Ranks (SJR) was created by a Spanish themes. research group in 2007 and is based on data from journals - Identify highly-cited papers in the journal and in other indexed in the Scopus (an Elsevier’s database) within a 3- journals: these are indicative of hot-topics on which arti- year period. SJR values are freely available at the SCImago cles should be commissioned, reflecting the hottest and Journal & Country Rank website. latest results in the field. Another indicator is the Journal h-Index. Like SJR, it is an - Identify zero-cited papers: analyze what topics do not open access metric, calculated using Scopus data, and freely attract citation and use this information to feed an edito- available at SCImago Journal & Country Rank website. rial strategy. The Journal h-Index is calculated in the same ways as the - Publish the relevant articles in the first issues of the year originally proposed Jorge Hirsh for individual authors. This (a larger window citation). means, the least number of publications (h), each of which - Preference for English as the language of publication. is cited at least h times. - Publish primarily original research and review articles: A strong association exists between the h-Index and jour- these articles are more likely to be cited than others. nal IF. - Some journals have ceased to publish case reports, which Other metrics are Eigenfactor and Article Influence tend to be infrequently cited. But others opted to publish, Score, and are now incorporated in JCR. Both new metrics given the potential importance a single case reports can 6 are based on a 5-year frame and self-citations are excluded. have in the field. Eigenfactor Score as a proxy of scientific prestige takes - Publish articles available with an open access policy and into account the quantity and ‘‘quality’’ of citations from encourage authors to self-archive the articles in insti- 6 highly cited journals. tutional or subject repositories. Articles freely available Article Influence Score is calculated by dividing the jour- have greater impact, are cited faster than subscription- 8 nals Eigenfactor Score by the number of articles in the access articles. journal. - Raise awareness to the journal, media promotion: pro- Other additions to the JCR metrics are the Immediacy mote the best articles using social media like Twitter, Index and the Cited-Half-Life.