Beyond the First Impact Factor: Editorial Renewal and Direction in Thoracic Research and Practice.

Impact Factors and Other Measures of a Journal's Influence

The role of impact factor in evaluating the value of scientific publications is critically reviewed.
\nOther possible criteria for evaluation are assessed and proposed.

We assessed the relationship between the size of the 39 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) medical categories and impact factor (IF) of journals in these categories, and the implications that it might have for emergency medicine (EM) journals. Using the 2010 JCR database, we calculated the mean IF, 5-year IF (5y-IF), Eigenfactor (EF), and Article Influence (AI) scores including all journals for each category. We also calculated a 'weighted IF' for all journals by dividing each journal IF by the mean IF of its category. We ranked EM journals according to IF and 'weighted IF' into all the journals included in the 39 categories. We assessed the relationship between category size and bibliometric scores by linear regression. Category size varied from 252 journals (Pharmacology and Pharmacy) to 14 (Primary Healthcare), EM category occupying the 36th position (23 journals). The mean IF of EM category ranked in 34th position, 5-yIF in 32nd, EF in 34th, and AI in 34th position. Category size had a direct and significant association with mean IF, 5y-IF, and AI but not with mean EF. When the EM journals were ranked among all the journals according to their IF, only two (9%) were placed into the first quartile and raised up to eight (35%) when 'weighted IF' was considered. There is a negative relationship between JCR size category and IF achieved by the journals. This places EM journals at a clear disadvantage because they represent one of the smallest clinical medical research disciplines.

Classification of periodicals in the CAPES QUALIS system: changes to the criteria are URGENTLY needed!

We investigated academic developmental trends in emergency medicine (EM) by analyzing the performance of EM journals. Data from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database for EM category journals, including journal titles, language, numbers, and impact factors (IFs) from 2000 to 2019 were collected. The aggregate IFs of EM and 11 other categories (cardiac and cardiovascular systems, clinical neurology, critical care medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology, infectious diseases, general and internal medicine, pediatrics, respiratory system, surgery, toxicology, and urology and nephrology) were collected from 2003 to 2019. The slope of the linear regression was used to evaluate the trend in EM journal IFs and the aggregate IFs of all categories. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the correlation between EM journals’ IF in 2000 and their IF trend from 2000 to 2019. The EM journal number increased from 8 (all in English) in 2000 to 31 (26 in English) in 2019. In total, 28 EM journals had a positive IF trend since their initial enrollment into the JCR database, and the trend was significant for 18 journals. The correlation of the EM journals’ IF in 2000 and IF trends from 2000 to 2019 was 0.75. The increasing trend of aggregate IF for the EM category was significant. In conclusion, the increased number, language diversity, and IF trend for EM journals indicates that the development of academic EM is a continuous international trend. In the past 20 years, the IF trend increased faster for EM journals with a higher initial IF. The overall performance of EM journals was non-inferior to other medical specialties.

The decision of which journals researchers submit their manuscripts to is based on a range of factors, including the quality of reviews, acceptance probability, turnaround time, target audience and fit, but an increasing one is the journal's reputation or perceived ‘quality’ as most commonly currently quantified by its impact factor.1 In an earlier editorial, it was argued that the impact factor, although not without flaws, provides a reasonable ball park assessment of the journal's impact or usefulness.2 It was, however, suggested that a small array of metrics would be more appropriate and could include a second citation metric that included citations to textbooks (are papers from the journal being used to provide evidence for undergraduate and postgraduate texts?), a download metric (how many people are reading the articles?) and a journal's acceptance rate.2 Because of its recognised flaws, new citation metrics are being introduced to rival the impact factor3-7 and these new metrics have been highlighted by their use in recent international Government research assessments.7 For example, Elsevier's Scopus database, which provides the citation metrics SCImago Journal Ranking Indicator and CiteScore, has been used in a number of national assessment exercises, including the UK Research Excellence Framework (2014), The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessments (2010, 2012, 2015), the Italian Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale's researcher assessment (2012, 2013) and the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e aTecnologia (FCT) assessment (2013/14).7 In light of these developments, it is timely to describe the various citation metrics and consider what is the most appropriate metric(s) for a clinical journal such as Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics (OPO). The most well-known, currently used citation metric is the Thomson-Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics) Institute of Scientific Information (ISI)'s 2-year journal impact factor.2, 8-10 The 2016 impact factor was calculated by the number of citations to the journal's articles published in 2014 and 2015, divided by the number of ‘papers’ published in the journal during those years. Only citations from journals that are included in Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports (JCR) on the online subscription-based service Web of Science (previously Web of Knowledge) count. This severely limits what is counted as a citation, although it could be argued that this keeps the quality of citations high. The denominator includes research papers (original articles, review papers, etc.) and does not include editorials, letters and news items, but JCR citations to all articles count (including those to editorials and letters). Case reports appear to be judged on a journal-by-journal basis by Web of Science, sometimes they are included in the denominator (and as they are rarely cited, this would lower impact factors) and sometimes not. This lack of transparency is also a flaw in the use of the impact factor and it is difficult to predict impact factors as it is not easy to forecast which documents will be included in calculations and which will not. OPO has an impact factor of 2.30 with 290 citations in 2014 and 2015 to 126 research papers (290/126 = 2.30). Web of Science also provides several other citation metrics, including an immediacy index, a 5-year impact factor and an Eigenfactor score (see Table 1).3 The 2016 immediacy index was determined by the number of citations in 2016 from papers published in 2016 (for OPO, 57/60 = 0.95) and is heavily dependent on papers published earlier in the year (e.g. the January OPO issue) as the papers published in the later issues (e.g. the November OPO issue) are highly unlikely to be cited in that year, given the lag in time from submission to publication of any papers that could cite a November publication. The immediacy index is sometimes considered an indicator for the following year's impact factor. This also highlights the fact that the 2-year window for impact factors is less (1.5 years?) for papers published in the November and December issues due to this time lag between submission and publication of citing papers. This is another reason why the 2-year impact factor is flawed. The 2016 5-year impact factor was determined by the number of citations in 2016 from papers published in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 (for OPO, 777/323 = 2.41). It is similar to the 2-year impact factor in that includes citations to editorials and letters in the numerator, but does not count them in the denominator. Web of Science also includes an indicator of the longevity of citations from journals, the journal half-life. This indicates the median age of papers cited in the given year, so that OPO's 2016 cited half-life of 9.9 years, indicates that half of the citations to OPO in 2016 were from papers 9.9 years old or younger. This citation metric is rarely discussed or used, but is a useful indicator of the longevity of papers in a journal. For example, our website includes a list of OPO's classic papers (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1475-1313/homepage/classic_papers.htm) that remain relevant and still cited despite being up to 25 years old. The Eigenfactor is produced for Web of Science by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom at the University of Washington, www.eigenfactor.com).3 It provides 5-year citation data and weights the prestige of citations using an algorithm similar to Google's PageRank, so that citations from high ranking journals such as Nature and Science count more than lower ranking journals. It does not include journal self-citations (e.g. Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery citations in Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery papers; author self-citations in different journals are counted), which works against highly specialised journals. However, its algorithm attempts to adjust for citation differences between different research fields.3 Unlike impact factors, eigenfactors are based on a total score of citations and are not divided by the number of papers published. This means that if two journals have the same impact factor, but one publishes 1000 papers per year and the other 500 papers, the former will have twice the eigenfactor. This may be partly because the eigenfactor is provided as a reference for libraries, in that journals can be ranked using a ‘Cost-Effectiveness Search’ based on the citation value per dollar that they provide. From the perspective of libraries, the 1000 paper volume journal provides twice as many articles for their readers compared to a 500 paper journal of equal impact factor. SCImago and CiteScore are the principal citation metrics developed within Elsevier's online subscription-based service Scopus to rival impact factors provided by Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.6 SCImago is the most well-established of the Scopus metrics. It is based on 3-year citation data, so that the 2016 SCImago Journal Rank Indicator (JRI) is based on citations in 2016 from papers published in 2013, 2014 and 2015.11 Like Eigenfactors, it weights the prestige of citations using an algorithm similar to Google's PageRank. It also differs from impact factors in that editorials and letters are included in the denominator. This means that journals which include a large number of editorials and letters, such as the Nature and Lancet series of journals, tend to have significantly lower SCImago JRIs (and CiteScores) than would be expected from their impact factors.5 CiteScore is a more recently introduced metric (December 2016) and is similar to SCImago, but differs in that it doesn't weight citations (Table 1). Both SCImago and CiteScore consider ‘documents’ beyond just journal articles, such as books and conference proceedings. Indeed, the Scopus database includes far more (they claim ‘double’) journals than Web of Science. For example, Web of Science includes four optometry journals: Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics, Optometry & Vision Science, Contract Lens & Anterior Eye and Clinical & Experimental Optometry. Scopus includes these four journals, plus the Journal of Optometry and Clinical & Refractive Optometry and Scopus includes a subcategory of optometry journals11 unlike Web of Science where Optometry journals are considered within the Ophthalmology subcategory or Google Scholar which has a joint Ophthalmology and Optometry subcategory.12 Google Scholar provides two citation metrics, the 5-year h-index and 5-year median h-index.12 These h-indices are Journal indices (h-indices can also be calculated for individual researchers and will be the topic for a future editorial). A h-index of N is calculated if N papers published in a journal have been cited N or more times. The median h-index is the median number of times that those N articles have been cited. In these ways the h-index avoids being distorted by one or a small number of very highly cited articles, which is a problem for the other metrics. Another strength is that it provides citations from all sources available on the web and can include citations in textbooks and important websites for example. This is also a potential downfall in that some of those sources are non-scholarly and some citations can be double (or more) counted if they appear in different places on the web. In addition, the h-index is typically driven by the papers in the two earliest years as these have the largest citations, so it provides potentially out-of-date information. For example, Optometry & Vision Science's 2017 h-index of 36 is based on 34 papers from 2012 and 2013, two from 2014 and none from 2015 or 2016. The 2017 h-index is therefore indicating the citation levels of the 2012 and 2013 volumes. It also provides a total score of citations and does not divide by the number of papers a journal publishes in the 5-year period, so that it is highly dependent on the number of papers. For example, although Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics (OPO) has much higher average citation metrics (Impact factor, SCImago and CiteScore) than Optometry & Vision Science, OPO's Google Scholar h-index (25) is lower than Optometry & Vision Science (36) as it published about three times fewer papers in 2012–2016 (391 vs 1207). Of the six main citation metrics, three are 5-year, two 3-year and one 2-year. Eigenfactors chose 5-years as ‘in many research areas, articles are not frequently cited until several years after publication. Therefore, measures that only look at citations in the first 2 years after publication can be misleading’.3 Scopus’ metrics use 3-years as ‘The time window that is chosen for a metric calculated for all serial titles in a multi-disciplinary database like Scopus should be a compromise that is the best fit across all subject areas……3 years is long enough to capture the citation peak of the majority of disciplines. A shorter time window, such as 2 years, is unfair to slower moving fields such as Physics and Astronomy. A longer time window, such as 5 years, is unfair to more rapidly moving fields such as Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.’6 The champions for a 2-year citation metric are, not surprisingly, those that this metric favours such as researchers in the biochemistry and molecular biology fields. Indeed, it has been suggested that the importance of the 2-year impact factor in rating research quality has led to the loss of clinical staff in UK academic departments of medicine in favour of basic scientists who are likely to provide higher impact factor papers (and thereby perhaps gain greater funding for their University) for the UK Research Assessment Exercise.10 Basic research is cited by both basic research and clinical research papers, while clinical research is cited by other clinical research papers, textbooks, professional guidelines etc. and much of the latter does not get included in impact factor calculations. Certainly, researchers in the biochemistry and molecular biology fields can readily publish in high impact factor journals and this can affect inter-discipline comparisons within Universities and with granting agencies as well as Government research assessments. Journals receiving numerous citations soon after publication might suggest that they have immediate and high impact and therefore must be high quality. However, papers in fields that cite a high volume of recent work tend to do so because older work rapidly becomes obsolete because of rapid advances in that field.13 Taking the example in Table 2, a hypothetical journal in which papers were cited highly in the first few years but then tails off, could have an impact factor of 10 but minimal impact after about 5 years. A journal in a discipline that is more of a slow burner would have citations in the other direction. Its impact factor could be 2.5, but its greatest impact is after 5 years and remains highly cited in subsequent years given the broader and sustained relevance of the research. The former journal does not appear to be providing papers that are four-times more impactful or higher quality and it could be argued that its overall impact is considerably less in the longer term. The latter example is not fanciful. For example, OPO's top cited paper, with 324 citations at an average of 25 citations per year, received 2 and 6 citations in its first 2 years after publication! The top cited papers in OPO tend to peak in terms of citations in years 3 and 4. For example, the top 10 cited OPO papers from the last 8 years that have a full 5-year history had mean citations rates of 12 and 13 in years 1 and 2, yet 15 and 17 in years 3 and 4, then drop to 13 in year 5. The lower cited papers follow this pattern even more strongly. Given that our impact factor is 2.3 currently, this highlights that impact factors tend to be greatly influenced by a relatively small number of highly cited papers rather than the breadth of papers published.2, 9 A 5-year window appears to be better, but has other problems. As discussed previously the Google Scholar h-index tends to be out-of-date and often reflects the two oldest volumes included, so that a 2017 h-index is essentially based on citations from 2012 and 2013. The issue is also present for other 5-year metrics such as the Eigenfactor and 5-year impact factor, although to a lesser extent. The 5-year impact factor score also takes many years to change in that a new editorial team would have to wait about 7 years before they could determine whether changes to the journal had influenced the 5-year citation metrics. Three or 4 year metrics may therefore be a good compromise. The impact factor's inclusion of citations from editorial and letters without including them in the denominator during its calculation seems inappropriate. I am not aware of any rationale for doing this and no other citation metric does so. The variable inclusion of case reports and other items means that there is a lack of transparency in the calculation of the impact factor and it is difficult to predict despite access to Web of Science. All journal articles other than news items should be included in both the numerator and denominator of citation metric calculations. Although the inclusion of journal self-citation is open to citation ‘game playing’ by journals, their removal as in Eigenfactors, seems harsh on specialised journals (such as Cataract & Refractive Surgery and the Journal of Refractive Surgery) which are bound to have a high level of journal self-citations. The weighting of citations in Eigenfactors and SCImago seems reasonable, but again leads to questions about transparency: what is the algorithm? Who decides what it is? I assume this is why Scopus have recently introduced the simpler CiteScore. Finally, should the main citation metric be an average or total score of citations? Is a journal of higher quality because it produces a good number of highly cited papers (but many more poorly cited ones) because it publishes a large number of papers? Or is it a journal whose average quality is high? I clearly prefer the latter, but this is likely due to the fact that OPO is a relatively small journal. The use of the total number of citations without division by the number of papers published means that Google Scholar and Eigenfactor citation metrics are heavily influenced by how many papers the journal publishes: they do not measure quantity or quality but a variable mixture of both. An earlier editorial argued that several citation metrics should be used, the standard 2-year impact factor plus another.1 That argument was predicated on the perception that the impact factor is so well established it is irreplaceable. It is not. Not too many years ago, the suggestion of Snellen visual acuity being replaced would have been laughed out of clinics. However, the Snellen chart is flawed and visual acuity using logMAR-based charts is now the standard in research studies, clinical trials and in computer-based systems and is quickly becoming the standard in everyday clinics.14 Similarly, the impact factor (i.e. the standard 2-year impact factor) is flawed, mainly because the 2-year window is inappropriate for so many journals and disciplines,2, 3, 5, 9 but also because of its illogical calculation, restriction to the relatively small range of journals included in Web of Science and lack of transparency. A range of metrics may well be ideal,2, 4, 6 but the 2-year impact factor being used as the standard surely needs to be challenged. To answer the question in the title, the best citation metric for a clinical journal (that provides an average citation score) currently available appears to be Scopus’ SCImago Journal Ranking Indicator or CIteScore. This may be best accompanied by a range of other metrics2, 4 that could include the Web of Science's 5-year impact factor and cited half-life, download metrics and acceptance rate. Thank you to Prof. Joanne Wood for helpful comments on an earlier version of this editorial. As the Editor-in-Chief of OPO, I am likely to favour the citation metrics that best portrays OPO; similarly as a researcher I am likely to favour citation metrics that favour my own clinical vision science research and highlight inadequacies in metrics that do not (such as the 2-year impact factor). OPO is listed in Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar.

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) publishes annually listings of impact factors of scientific journals, based upon data extracted from the Science Citation Index (SCI). The impact factor of a journal is defined as the average number of citations given in a specific year to documents published in that journal in the two preceding years, divided by the number of “citable” documents published in that journal in those 2 years. This article presents evidence that for a considerable number of journals the values of the impact factors published in ISI's Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are inaccurate, particularly for several journals having a high impact factor. The inaccuracies are due to an inappropriate definition of citable documents. Document types not defined by ISI as citable (particularly letters and editorials) are actually cited and do contribute to the citation counts of a journal. We present empirical data in order to assess the degree of inaccuracy due to this phenomenon. For several journals the results are striking. We propose to calculate for a journal impact factors per type of document rather than one single impact factor as given currently in the JCR. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The scientific research output of individuals and institutions is commonly evaluated by the number of publications in journals with high impact factor and their corresponding citations. However, the interdisciplinary character of journals reporting advances in conservation science favors their spread over different categories of the Journal Citation Report (JCR). Here we report an analysis of the evolution of the impact factor, the percentile, and the citations on the JCR indexed conservation journals over the last ten years. Our analysis shows that of the 57 conservation journals indexed in the JCR, only eight of them have an impact factor. These journals are distributed across different categories in the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and these categories are sometimes not suitable and decrease their metric impact. This analysis was complemented by a worldwide survey of conservation professionals on their opinions about publishing in these journals. The survey showed two different perspectives about conservation science journals in relation to the background and work of the responders. Conservators and restorers prefer conservation journals with case studies; while researchers prefer high-impact journals, even if they lie outside of the conservation area, so the overall impact factor of conservation journals remains low (low JIF, low Q values). This dichotomy could be fixed with the creation of a new category for heritage science journals in JCR.

Impact factors and relevance of research outputs: one step forward, two back?

This study aims to identify determinants of high impact, measured by Impact Factor (IF) and Eigenfactor score, among otolaryngology journals. Bibliometric data of "otorhinolaryngology" journals were collected from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database. For the years 2009-2020, we collected normalized Eigenfactor score, 5-year IF, immediacy index, fraction of IF from journal-self citation, proportion and magnitude of published citable articles, and total citation counts. High-IF and -Eigenfactor journals were considered those within the top-quartile of that metric each respective year. High-IF and -Eigenfactor otolaryngology journals displayed higher 5-year IFs, immediacy indexes, and IF without self-citation (p < .05 for all years) including total citations counts and citable articles when ranked by Eigenfactor (p < .05 for all years). Otolaryngology IF correlated with 5-year IF and immediacy index within the same year (p < .05 for all years) and from previous years (p < .05 for all years; p < .05 for2017-2018; p > .05 for2009-2016). Eigenfactor correlated with 5-year IF, total citation counts, and citable articles within the same year (p < .05 for all years) and previous years (p < .05 for2013-2018). Multilinear regression revealed that 5-year IF (p < .05 for2009-2018) and immediacy index from the prior 2 years (p < .05 for2017-2018; p > .05 for2009-2016) predicted 2019 IF. Similarly, 5-year IF, total citation counts, and citable articles (p < .05 for 2013-2018) predicted 2019 Eigenfactor score. Sustained publication of impactful articles is the dominant driver of high IF and Eigenfactor score. Eigenfactor score reflects a unique evaluation of otolaryngology journals; ranking otolaryngology journals by their Eigenfactor scores significantly alters journal ranking compared to ranking by IF. NA.

Knowledge Organization in editorial policies for titles, abstracts and keywords in JCR-indexed journals: an exploratory study in the areas of Information and Communication Sciences

EDITORIAL Cite asfollows: Osborne, Bruce 2012Editorial. Biology and Environment: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 112B, i-ii. DOI:l().3318/ BIOE.2012.21. As I indicated in myeditorial in thefirst issueof 2012,I am encouraged bythenumber ofarticles nowbeingsubmitted toBiology andEnvironment , as well as the increased internationalisation of the journal,becausemorearticles aresubmitted from outsideof Ireland.As I have said previously, however, we haveto be realistic aboutthegoals that wesetgiven theresources andobjectives ofthe journal, whichcovers local,aswellasmorewider, international interests, andoursuccess willdepend on our abilityto continueto appeal to both audiences. Increasingly thesuccessof a journalis being measured byitsImpact Factor, a theme I promised to returnto. An ImpactFactoris a 'metric' calculated by and published in Journal Citation Reports - a productof the Thomson Reuters groupofpublishers. In general, theImpactFactor isusedtomeanthetwo-year impact factor, which, 'simply' expressed, is a number fora givenyear derived from thenumber ofcitations thatyearto papers published in a journalin theprevious two years,dividedby the numberof citablearticles published inthesame journaloverthosesametwo years. Another, often-quoted Impact Factor isbased ona five-year period. Anadditional, perhaps lesserknownmeasure is theImmediacy Factor, which reflects exactlywhat it says on the tin - the immediate impactof a particular publication - in whichnumbers ofcitations ofajournal's articles in theyearoftheir publication aremeasured. 2011impact factor = number of citations in all 2011 papersin SCIE database toB&E papers withnominal publication datesof2010and2009 number ofcitable B&E articles with nominal publication dates of2010and2009 2012impact factor = number of citations in all 2012 papersin SCIE database toB&E papers with nominal publication datesof2011and2010 number ofcitable B&E articles with nominal publication dates of2011and2010 The year in which citations to an article contribute to an impactfactor is dependent on the yearof publication givenon an individual paper.A paperpublished onlinein one yearbut published inhard copythefollowing year maybear either yearasitsyearofpublication - itisa matter fortheconvention followed bythepublisher. Thismaymeanthata paperwiththenominal publication yearof2010,for instance, mayactually have been first publishedonline in mid-2009. Citations ofthispaperbefore theendof2009will not contribute to any index, citations in the calendar year2010 willcontribute to theImmediacyIndex ,andcitations tothepaperin2011and 2012willcontribute to the2011and2012impact factors, respectively. Confusingly, although Thomson Reuters ScienceCitation IndexExpanded (SCIE) informationis usedas thebasisforcalculating all of the metrics published inJournal Citation Reports, these two sections of ThomsonReutersoperateindependently . The SCIE databaseis updatedon a weeklybasis,whiletheJournal Citation Reports bases its metrics on a snapshot of information extracted from theSCIE database at one pointin timeduring thecalendar year. So,whatdoesitallmeanfor us?Clearly, given the natureof the publications in Biology and Environment , whicharelikely to havetheir major significance in thelongterm, a highImmediacy Indexisnotsomething we canreasonably hopeto strive for.Of theother twometrics, thefive-year Impact Factor maybe morerelevant forus,given thesamearguments. One issueassociated withthe separation of theinformation intoa nearcontinuousrecord , compiled bytheSCIE, andtheactual publishing oftheImpact Factor, isthat itisalmost impossible to recreate exactly thestatistics usedto derivetheImpactFactor.Yes, we can getsome idea,butno,we cannot necessarily derive theexact figure. We simply needtowaitforthepublication oftherelevant year's Journal Citations Reports. Moreover, we can expectsignificant year-toyear swings intheImpact Factor injournals, suchas Biology and Environment , wherethe numbers of issuesper year is relatively small,because the numberof citationscould changedramatically fromyearto year.A highly citedpaperin one two-orfive-year period couldresult ina significant increase intheImpact Factor, forinstance. So,what canwedo?Continuing toincrease the number of submissions of regular papersand the further internationalisation of thejournalwillbe important, as are initiatives suchas the Praeger ReviewsandtheSpecialissues, so further suggestionsforthesearealways welcome.Otherrecommendations relate toproviding more information on DOI:10.33 18/BIOE.201 2.21 Biology andEnvironment: Proceedings oftheRoyalIrish Academy, Vol.112B, No.2,i-ii (2012).<: RoyalIrish Academy i Editorial ourwebsite, including yearly updates ofourImpact Factor, background information on Impact Factors, an emphasison our international peer-review process, and comparisons withothersimilar publications , as wellas an frequently askedquestions (FAQ) section.Papersare alreadymorewidely disseminatedthan before through increased availability of paperabstracts and fullpapersvia MetaPress. We can highlight mostdownloaded papers andmostcitedpaperfor a particular period, and these could be made freelyavailableon MetaPress andon ourwebsite. We already includeinformation on thefirst page of everypaperexplaining how the paper shouldbe citedin reference lists in other publications ,and where possible,we can check that citations toourpapers inSCIE journals areaccurate so they willbe taken intoaccount whenanImpact Factor iscalculated. Electronic 'alerts'to newlypublished papers aregoingto be provided viaMetaPress to anyone whochooses tosignuptoa mailing list, so authors of forthcoming publications are made awareof papers they might wishto cite. Whileall of thiswillhelpin improving the reputation ofBiology andEnvironment for publishing good-quality, interesting science,we shouldnot lose sightof the factthatthismessage will still dependlargely on individuals andindividual contacts . The board, inparticular, hasa majorresponsibility for disseminating thismessage.We are progressing, butwe needtogo that bitfurther! I would like to thankRoisin Jones,in particular, forinformation on impactfactors and forherclarifications andamendments to an earlier draft oftheeditorial. Muchofthis information was obtained byRoisinas a result ofan Association of Learned andProfessional Society Publisher's workshopsheattended in March2012,funded bythe RoyalIrish Academy, andwe aregrateful fortheir continued support for the journal.I wouldalsolike to thankRuth Hegarty, Mike Jonesand Fraser Mitchell fordiscussion. ii ...

The effectivity of journal impact factor (JIF) is questioned in evaluating academic players. Coercive self-citation was widely criticized and Clarivate annually suppressed journals with high journal self-citation (JSC) rates. Recently, some journals significantly increased their articles but their JIFs and JSC rates were diversified which lacks reasonable explanations. Here, we revealed the complexities of the dynamical interactions among different influence factors and different components of journal citation. Journal citation frequencies have strong correlations with JSC rates regarding citable items, significant correlations with numbers of journals' articles and negative significant correlations with JSC rates regarding total citations. Journal citation consists of JSC, intradisciplinary non-JSC and interdisciplinary non-JSC. JSC has the quickest dynamic and interdisciplinary non-JSC has the slowest dynamic while most journals are more cited by interdisciplinary citations. Journal citation is initially decided by the number of citable items. Journal's share (citing articles) in related disciplines influence JSC and intradisciplinary non-JSC positively and negatively, respectively. Multiple citations promoted by the increase in articles, the skewness of the topic profile, preference-related self-citation and anomalous self-citation are of benefit to citation. The complex dynamical interactions result in increment effects of the number of articles acting on JIF, which is stronger for JSC and citable items. The increase in articles also promotes intradisciplinary non-JSC when the journal's shares in related disciplines are low. This process will be reversed after the journal's shares become high enough which may finally decrease its impact factor. It is quicker for the journal with a stronger intradisciplinary citation. The calculational results of the average JIFs of selected journals agree with the statistical results. In addition, we can explain the related situations of some journals. Finally, we suggested that the JSC rate in terms of citable items should be considered for judging the level of JSC.

The Impact Factor and Collection Development The journal impact factor (IF) is reported by ISI in Journal Citation Reports (JCR). “A journal's impact factor is based on 2 elements: the numerator, which is the number of citations in the current year to any items published in a journal in the previous 2 years, and the denominator, which is the number of substantive articles (source items) published in the same 2 years” [1]. Much research has been done on IF as a measure of local journal use for collection development. Blecic used a comparison of three methods: in-house use, circulation, and citation to determine journal use, finding a “significant correlation” between the three methods and arguing that because of this correlation, only one type of data was necessary to make retention decisions [2]. MacDonald's study of online journal usage in relation to citation analysis examined whether online journal use (as measured by an academic library) and a library's publisher-reported full-text downloads predicted citations, finding that “citation is clearly related to usage” [3]. Using Biosis Previews, Davis identified core journals in the life sciences by analyzing the journals in which Cornell University authors published [4]. Davis concluded that the “generic metrics of the JCR simply cannot provide the campus-level data crucial to making informed decisions about the local importance of individual titles,” as argued earlier by Pan [5] and Chrzastowski [6].

Purpose: This study explored changes in the journal publishing market by publisher and access type using the major journals that publish about 95% of Journal Citation Reports (JCR) articles.Methods: From JCR 2016, 2018, and 2020, a unique journal list by publisher was created in Excel and used to analyze the compound annual growth rate by pivot tables. In total, 10,953 major JCR journals were analyzed, focusing on publisher type, open access (OA) status, and mega journals (publishing over 1,000 articles per year).Results: Among the 19 publishers that published over 10,000 articles per year, in JCR 2020, six large publishers published 59.6% of the articles and 13 publishers 22.5%. The other publishers published 17.9%. Large and OA publishers increased their article share through leading mega journals, but the remaining publishers showed the opposite tendency. In JCR 2020, mega journals had a 26.5% article share and an excellent distribution in terms of the Journal Impact Factor quartile. Despite the high growth (22.6%) and share (26.0%) of OA articles, the natural growth of non-OA articles (7.3%) and total articles (10.7%) caused a rise in journal subscription fees. Articles, citations, the impact factor, and the immediacy index all increased gradually, and the compound annual growth rate of the average immediacy index was almost double than that of the average impact factor in JCR 2020.Conclusion: The influence of OA publishers has grown under the dominance of large publishers, and mega journals may substantially change the journal market. Journal stakeholders should pay attention to these changes.