The Impact Factor Fallacy

Paulus, Frieder M.; Cruz, Nicole; Krach, Sören

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01487

Cited by 82 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Therefore, our target response rate was 17%. Impact factors were used to select journals for sampling as they can be reflective of the relative level of visibility of journals to researchers within a field ( Paulus et al, 2018 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Impact factors were used to select journals for sampling as they can be reflective of the relative level of visibility of journals to researchers within a field. 51 The lead editor for each of the 1500 journals was identified via the journal's website, and contact emails obtained via a reliable source e.g. journals' and academic institutions' websites or recent publications.…”

Section: Journal Selection Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Journal policies and editors’ opinions on peer review

Hamilton

Fraser

Hoekstra

et al. 2020

eLife

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Peer review practices differ substantially between journals and disciplines. This study presents the results of a survey of 322 editors of journals in ecology, economics, medicine, physics and psychology. We found that 49% of the journals surveyed checked all manuscripts for plagiarism, that 61% allowed authors to recommend both for and against specific reviewers, and that less than 6% used a form of open peer review. Most journals did not have an official policy on altering reports from reviewers, but 91% of editors identified at least one situation in which it was appropriate for an editor to alter a report. Editors were also asked for their views on five issues related to publication ethics. A majority expressed support for co-reviewing, reviewers requesting access to data, reviewers recommending citations to their work, editors publishing in their own journals, and replication studies. Our results provide a window into what is largely an opaque aspect of the scientific process. We hope the findings will inform the debate about the role and transparency of peer review in scholarly publishing.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Journal Selection Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Journal policies and editors’ opinions on peer review

Hamilton

Fraser

Hoekstra

et al. 2020

eLife

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In particular, the authors of this study have made efforts to put OA Publishing options first in a list when they are used as examples of something positive, such as author Collister's recent utterance "commonly recognized journals like PLOS One, Nature, or Science". We also suggest that if you must reference a contentious measure like Journal Impact Factor (Paulus et al, 2018) then avoid putting it at the beginning or the end of the list in order to not afford it high importance.…”

Section: Word Choice Orderingmentioning

confidence: 99%

From “Patchy Endorsements” to Intentional Advocacy: Deconstructing Bias in the Language of Open Access

Collister

Cantrell

2021

Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication

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This paper argues that linguistic features common in discourse around Open Access Publishing are socially constructed in ways that lend themselves to implicit bias against the Open Access (OA) movement. These biases materialize through common linguistic practices such as de-centering OA and highlighting the uncertainty of OA Publishing, resulting in "patchy endorsements" of the status quo of Subscription Publishing. Following previous research that demonstrates how educational content on OA can lead to cognitive load and biases that reinforce the status quo in scholarly publishing, we analyze publicly available, online content from our own institutions with an eye towards how these biases manifest specifically in the practice of librarianship. Using examples from this analysis, we suggest strategies and intentional language that can be used by librarians and other OA advocates to counteract bias and shift towards a construction of OA Publishing as the status quo. While many strategies and difficult negotiations are needed to functionally establish OA as the default in scholarly publishing, language choice is a device through which advocates at any level can advance towards an open-centered culture.

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“…Academic metrics can be fundamentally divided into two groups, journal-based metrics (JBMs) and author-based metrics (ABMs). The most widespread JBM is, even nowadays, the Clarivate Analytics journal impact factor (JIF) (Garfield 1972), for example in Sweden (Hammarfelt and Rushforth 2017), despite its limitations (Teixeira da Silva and Dobránszki 2017a), abuses (Teixeira da Silva and Bernès 2018), unwarranted use in academic policy and decision making (Paulus et al 2018), and the need to complement it by corrective measures (Winkmann and Schweim 2000;Aixelá and Rovira-Esteva 2015;Liu et al 2016). CiteScore was introduced in December 2016 by Elsevier as an alternative to the JIF, and thus serves as a direct competitor of the JIF, is more transparent than the JIF, and plays an increasing role in journal rating and evaluation because it can bridge some of JIF's limitations, including the fact that it is freely accessible, uses a larger database [Scopus vs.…”

Section: Academic Metrics and Their Potential Distortion By Citing Rementioning

confidence: 99%

Corrective factors for author- and journal-based metrics impacted by citations to accommodate for retractions

Dobránszki

Silva

2019

Scientometrics

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Citation-based metrics are frequently used to evaluate the level, or quality, of a researcher, or their work, often as a function of the ranking of the journal in which they publish, and broadly tend to be divided into journal-based metrics (JBMs) and author-based metrics (ABMs). Despite wide knowledge of the gaming of such metrics, in particular the Clarivate Analytics journal impact factor (JIF), no suitable substitute concept has yet emerged, nor has any corrective measure been developed. In a post-publication peer review world of increasing retractions, and within a framework of open science, we propose correction factors for JBMs and ABMs that take into account retractions. We describe ways to correct the JIF, CiteScore, the 5-year Impact Factor, Immediacy Index, Cited Half-Life, Raw Impact per Paper and other JBMs (Eigenfactor Score and Article Influence Score) as well as the h-index, one of the most widespread ABMs, depending on the number of retractions for that journal or individual, respectively. The existence of such corrective factors could make the use of these metrics more transparent, and might allow them to be used in a world that is adapting to an increase in retractions and corrective measures to deal with erroneous scientific literature. We caution that such correction factors should be used exclusively as such, and should not be viewed, or used, as punitive factors.

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The Impact Factor Fallacy

Cited by 82 publications

References 44 publications

Journal policies and editors’ opinions on peer review

Journal policies and editors’ opinions on peer review

From “Patchy Endorsements” to Intentional Advocacy: Deconstructing Bias in the Language of Open Access

Corrective factors for author- and journal-based metrics impacted by citations to accommodate for retractions

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