Nuts and Bolts of Scholarly Publishing

How does the journal impact the scholarly community and other audiences?

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:

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:

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.

“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.

“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.