Purpose: To analyze the aggregate impact factor (AIF) in ophthalmology, its inflation rate, and its relation to other subject fields. Methods: A retrospective, database review of all subject fields in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), Science edition. Citation data, AIF, number of journals and citations from the years 2003–2011 were analyzed. Data were retrieved from JCR. Future trends were calculated using a linear regression method. Results: The AIF varies considerably between subjects. It shows also an inflation rate, which varies annually. The AIF inflation rate in ophthalmology was not as high as the background AIF inflation rate. Conclusions: The AIF inflation rate caused the AIF to increase annually. Not considering these variations in the AIF between years and between fields will make the AIF as a bibliometric tool inappropriate.

Finding a suitable open access journal to publish scientific work is a complex task: Researchers have to navigate a constantly growing number of journals, institutional agreements with publishers, funders’ conditions and the risk of Predatory Publishers. To help with these challenges, we introduce a web-based journal recommendation system called B!SON. It is developed based on a systematic requirements analysis, built on open data, gives publisher-independent recommendations and works across domains. It suggests open access journals based on title, abstract and references provided by the user. The recommendation quality has been evaluated using a large test set of 10,000 articles. Development by two German scientific libraries ensures the longevity of the project.