Introduction Impact factor – Garfield1 first mentioned the idea of an impact factor in 1955, and it was only in the early 1960s he, along with Irving H Sher, created the journal impact factor to help select journals for Science Citation Index. The evolution of the idea of the impact factor is well documented 2. From then on, it has been used widely for different purposes; it is being used, often indiscriminately, in the evaluation of performance by individual scientists, ranking institutions and countries, selection of candidates for awards and fellowships of academies, and granting of promotions and tenures in universities. Despite warning against such uses by Garfield himself 2, the literature of scientometrics is replete with improper use of impact factor. Many critics have commented on such misuse. Many seem to forget the cardinal principle that all citation studies should be normalized to take into account variables such as the discipline, citation density, and half life3. Some even gather improper data sets and draw conclusions beyond what the data warrant4.
Use and misuse of impact factor - Both experts in scientometrics and scientists have commented on the need to restrict the use of impact factor9,19,20. Appalled at the mindless abuse made of citation data and journal IF in countries like China and India, Stanford chemist Richard Zare emphasised the prime role of expert opinion in judging someone’s worth as a researcher. At Stanford (and most American universities), says Zare, they do not count number of published papers, rank them according to authorship order, and ...
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...iques for normalizing journal IF. We have adopted the more objective rank normalized impact factor method for subject categories suggested by Pudovkin and Garfield74:
For any journal j the rank normalized impact factor rnIFj = (K - Rj + 1) K, where Rj is the JCR rank of journal j and K is the number of journals in its category. If a journal j has rnIFj = X it means that 100% x (1 -X) of the journals in its JCR category have higher IF values. The top journals in each subject category will have rnIF equal to 1.0 and the median journals will have mIF close to 0.5.
We compared the 2-year and 5-year rank normalized IF, mean rank normalized IF and mean normalized IF of OA and subscription journals indexed in JCR 2012 (Science) for the world as a whole for different fields as classified in ESI.
We used MS Access and wrote few SQL scripts for data analysis.
Zuckerman, Harriet (1977). Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States. New York: Free Press
Verify the feasibility of the model: Use the weight information to calculate the distance of case set and verify whether the ranking order is consistent with the experts’ evaluation result.
This final example exhibits scientific credibility issues that affected the outlook on the scientific community within the public's eye. Louis Pasteur is one of the legendary figures in history. He lied about his research by stealing ideas from a competitor in a way that
National Music Publishers Association ( NMPA ), 1997. International Survey of Music Publishing Revenues. New York: NMPA.
revenue per quarter (statista.com, 2016). Even if we were to start adding in estimated subscriptions,
The University of Kentucky Press publication is a work of more than 10 years. It has more than a grand entries from 150 authors, making it a
This is the time for the newspaper industry, The Economist in particularly, to fully explore alternative news delivery platforms, such as mobile phone and the Internet. “Old media” is no longer support the demand, and people tend to use more tablets and mobile phone rather than buy printed newspapers (Musil, 2013). Nevertheless, a simple change of platform is not guarantee of success.
Zimmer, C. (April 16, 2012). A sharp rise in retractions prompts calls for reform. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0#h
Behr, S. K., & Murphy, D. L. (1993). Research Progress and Promise :The Role of Perceptions
“Scientists Not Immune from Gender Bias, Yale Study Shows.” Yale News. Yale University, 24 Sept. 2012. Web. 05 Mar. 2014.
Collins, H. M. (1983). The sociology of scientific knowledge: Studies of contemporary science. Annual Review of Sociology, 265-285.
Urwick, L. F. and E. F. L. Brech (1966). The making of scientific management: Pitman.
The Music Business Journal is an online journal based in the United Kingdom. The two editors, JoJo Gould and Jonathan Little, are both lecturers, researchers, and writers in the music industry. When they saw that the music industry was underdeveloped in academic terms, the two founded the Music Business Journal to “facilitate the sharing of information and knowledge across a range of music industry activities.” Consultants for the journal come from a wide array of expertise and from all over the world. Countries represented are the U.K., Australia, U.S.A., and Turkey.
Cole, K. C., and Sue Giddings. "Is There Such a Thing as Scientific Objectivity?" DISCOVER Sept. 1985: 76-78. Web.
Choi, J-Y, Lee J-H, & Sohn S-Y 2009, 'Impact analysis for national R&D funding in science and technology using quantification method II ', Research Policy, vol. 38, no. 10, pp. 1534-1544.