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Nuts and Bolts of Scholarly Publishing
- Getting Started
- Evaluating Journals: Fit
- Evaluating Journals: Impact
- Evaluating Journals: Quality
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- Journal Contracts: Deciding to Sign
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Scholarly Communication Librarian
Journal Impact
How does the journal impact the scholarly community and other audiences?
- Metrics ToolkitThe Metrics Toolkit helps scholars and evaluators understand and use citations, web metrics, and altmetrics responsibly in the evaluation of research. The Metrics Toolkit provides evidence-based information about research metrics across disciplines, including how each metric is calculated, where you can find it, and how each should (and should not) be applied. You’ll also find examples of how to use metrics in grant applications, CV, and promotion packages.
Citation-based impact metrics
Citation-based measures typically use algorithms that calculate the number of times, on average, an article in the journal has been cited over during a recent time frame. The Journal Impact Factor, found in InCites Journal Citation Reports, is probably the best known:
- Journal Citation ReportsA tool for evaluating and comparing journals. Metrics include journal impact factor, eigenfactor, and more. Citation data drawn from approximately 12,000 scholarly and technical journals and conference proceedings from more than 3,300 publishers in over 60 countries. JCR is a leading source of citation data on journals in the areas of science, technology, and social sciences. JCR includes data from Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index in Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics, formerly Thomson Reuters).
Other measures have been developed to address some of the concerns with the Journal Impact Factor. This non-exhaustive list describes some of these measures and how they differ from the Journal Impact Factor:
- EigenfactorAlso based on Web of Science citation index, Eigenfactor uses information from the entire citation network to rank journals. It also uses a 5-year citation window and adjusts for differences in citation norms across disciplines.
- Google Scholar Top PublicationsThis ranking displays a journal's h5-index. The h-index is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were each cited at least h times each in the last 5 years.
- SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)SJR is a measure of scientific influence of scholarly journals that accounts for both the number of citations received by a journal and the importance or prestige of the journals where such citations come from. Inspired by Google PageRank algorithm.
Curious about critiques of journal impact factors? Read on!
Bornmann, Lutz, and Werner Marx. 2016. “The Journal Impact Factor and Alternative Metrics.” EMBO Reports 17 (8): 1094. https://doi.org/10.152/embr.201642823.
Scully, C, and H Lodge. 2005. “Impact Factors and Their Significance; Overrated or Misused?” British Dental Journal 198 (April): 391.
Altmetrics
“Citations are not the only way to represent the impact of a research article. A few alternative indicators have been the subjects of webometrics and bibliometrics research for years, including download counts and mentions in patents. However, as scholarly communication moves increasingly online, more indicators have become available: how many times an article has been bookmarked, blogged about, cited in Wikipedia and so on. These metrics can be considered altmetrics – alternative metrics of impact.” (Piwowar 2013)
While the h-index, citation counts, and journal impact factors demonstrate the influence of research in academia, another metric, Alternative Metrics or altmetrics for short, provides a way of showing the more immediate impact of work in a social realm. Altmetrics include social media activity, media coverage, and inclusion in policy documents or scholarly commentary, among other types of activity.
Altmetrics are, simply, metrics beyond traditional metrics that can help give a more complete picture of how research is being shared and used. Altmetrics are meant to complement, not replace, traditional metrics.
"Altmetrics" is a general term applied to several different types of metrics, provided by commercial vendors or non-profit third parties. Altmetrics scores are increasingly integrated into major databases, such as ProQuest and EBSCO.
- AltmetricGenerates the Altmetric Attention Score for a research output, providing an indicator of the amount of attention that it has received.
- Altmetric BookmarkletAdd the bookmarklet in your browser to generate altmetrics for articles on the web.
- ImpactstoryTrack and display altmetrics for your own research. NOTE: requires a Twitter account to join.
- PlumX MetricPlumX Metrics provide insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research output (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and many more) in the online environment.
Open Access
“Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. [...] OA journals perform peer review and then make the approved contents freely available to the world.” (Suber 2004)
Publishing your work through an open access venue can mean making it accessible to many more people -- including the public, policymakers, and even scholars at institutions that may not have access to certain subscription journals. Keep this in mind when considering what kind of impact you want your work to have, and how your choice of publication venue can effect that.
- Open Access Research GuideAn in-depth guide from UTSA Libraries about what open access is and why to make your work open.
- Directory of Open Access JournalsA collection of quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, covering all subjects and many languages.
Open Access by Peter Suber
ISBN: 9780262301732Publication Date: 2019In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn't, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Available online as an open access publication.
Learn More
- Measuring Research ImpactThis guide provides an introduction to the information and issues regarding researcher and journal impact