Scrambling for higher metrics in the Journal Impact Factor bubble period: a real-world problem in science management and its implications

Abstract

Universities and funders in many countries have been using Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as an indicator for research and grant assessment despite its controversial nature as a statistical representation of scientific quality. This study investigates how the changes of JIF over the years can affect its role in research evaluation and science management by using JIF data from annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to illustrate the changes. The descriptive statistics find out an increase in the median JIF for the top 50 journals in the JCR, from 29.300 in 2017 to 33.162 in 2019. Moreover, on average, elite journal families have up to 27 journals in the top 50. In the group of journals with a JIF of lower than 1, the proportion has shrunk by 14.53% in the 2015–2019 period. The findings suggest a potential ‘JIF bubble period’ that science policymaker, university, public fund managers, and other stakeholders should pay more attention to JIF as a criterion for quality assessment to ensure more efficient science management.

Fortification of retraction notices to improve their transparency and usefulness

“…However, empirical evidence has pointed out that the current system is a major reason for researchers engaging in questionable research practices (QRPs) (Bonn & Pinxten, 2019). The ‘publish or perish’ culture (Vuong, 2019) or the abuse of journal metrics (Tran et al, 2020) has been held widely accountable. Sacco et al (2018) suggested that believing QRPs is necessary for career advancement is correlated with higher acceptance of QRPs.…”

A bibliometric review on development economics research in Vietnam from 2008 to 2020

“…The well-known journal metrics from Web of Science and Scopus are considered as a simple type of bibliometric. However, using a mere number to rank a journal has many shortcomings and can be abused in various ways (Berenbaum 2019 ; Tran et al 2020 ). Thus, in its reports, the Web of Science has to use more sophisticated methods to provide an overview of the scientific development in South and East Asia (Adams et al 2019 ) or to identify hot topics and new research fronts (Szomszor et al 2020 ).…”