Increasing the impact of journal articles

James BissetAcademic Liaison Librarian

(Research Support)

Session outline

• Importance of getting your research read• Individual citations• Where to publish

– High ranking: journal citation reports– Improving your citation count: Open Access and

repositories• Optimising “citability”

Quick survey…

• WoK/WoS• JCR• SciVerse Scopus• PoP software• JULIET

• JIF• Eigenfactor• SCImagoJR• SNIP• h – index

Importance of getting your research read

Getting your research read

• Making research visible• Why?

– Establishing research profile– Research Evaluation Framework

• How?– Reputable publishing routes– New routes – Networks

(2008) Taylor and Francis LibSite Newsletter, issue 9. p. 2

(2008) Taylor and Francis LibSite Newsletter, issue 9. p. 3

Things to consider

• Impact does not always = excellence• Citation cultures vary across disciplines• Publication cultures vary too• Research careers have different stages

Individual citations

Citations to individual papers

• Links between papers that have something in common

• Tool to make connections• Building on or challenging research• Help make a judgement about impact an

article has made• Sum of citations useful indication of impact of

an author

Web of Science

• 1955 Eugene Garfield - the idea of creating a citation index for science to…

“eliminate the uncritical citation of fraudulent, incomplete or obsolete data by making it

possible for the conscientious scholar to be aware of criticisms of earlier papers.”

Garfield, E (1955) ‘Citation Indexes for Science’ Science, New Series, Vol. 122, No. 3159, pp. 108-111

Web of Science

• 1955 Eugene Garfield - the idea of measuring the “impact” of journal articles using citations

• 1960s Science Citation Index developed to highlight “formal, explicit linkages between papers that have particular points in common”– (now part of Thomson Reuters WoS)

• 1975 Journal Citation Reports – uses WoS data to rank journals within subject categories

(2008) Taylor and Francis LibSite Newsletter, issue 9. p. 5

Science subjects

Social-science subjects

SciVerse Scopus

• Launched in 2004 by Elsevier• Serious competition to Web of Science • Main emphasis on science initially but broader

now• Currently indexes 18,700 ‘active’ journals plus

conference proceedings• No access via Durham as we have WoK

Google Scholar

• Data for broader range of documents e.g. books, reports

• Contributes to higher number of citations• More useful for recent documents• Useful for subjects not covered by WoS• Trace developments/versions of same paper

Publishers

• List of references • Can pull citation data from other providers• Some link to references and cited works• Alerts depend on citation in another journal

published by same publisher

Things you can do

• Count citations• Link to other related articles• Set up citation alerts• Search for cited references• See citation reports for journals and authors• Citation mapping

• Web of Science DEMO

Activity

• Use Web of Science to try a citation search for an article and look at the citation report

• Look for the same article in Google Scholar. How do the number of citations vary using Google Scholar?

Measuring & monitoring citations

• Counting citations – WoS, Scopus, JStor, SD, publishers and GS

• Linked references – WoS, Scopus, JStor, publishers

• Citation alerts –WoS, Scopus, publishers & GS• Cited Reference Search – WoS, Scopus• Citation Report – WoS, Scopus• Map citations to find related material – WoS

Individual citations – author metrics

Citation metrics

• h-index (Hirsch, 2005)– An author’s number of articles (h) that have received at

least h citations – a researcher with an h-index of 10 has published 10

articles that have each been cited at least 10 times

• g-index (Egghe, 2006)– The highest number (g) of papers that together received g2

or more citations – a researcher with a g-index of, say, 10 has published 10

papers that together have been cited at least 100 times

Author: Smith, J

Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which have been cited as follows:

a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3

H-index: “no. of articles (n) that have received at least n citations”

Author: Smith, J

Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which have been cited as follows:

a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3

H-index: 3 (at least 3 References with 3 or more citations)

“no. of articles (n) that have received at least n citations”

Author: Smith, J

Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which have been cited as follows:

a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3

H-index: not 4 ( only 3 References with 4 or more citations)“no. of articles (n) that have received at least n citations”

Author: Smith, J

Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which have been cited as follows:

a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3

G-index: “The highest number (g) of papers that together received g2 or more citations”

Author: Smith, J

Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which have been cited as follows:

a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3

G-index: 5 (5x5 =25… top 5 cited articles= 31)“The highest number (g) of papers that together received g2 or more citations”

Author: Smith, J

Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which have been cited as follows:

a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3

G-index: not 6 (6x6 =36… top 6 cited articles= 34)

“The highest number (g) of papers that together received g2 or more citations”

Publish or Perish software

• Anne-Wil Harzing (2006) current version: 3.8.1 (Oct 2012)

• Aimed at individual researchers• Analyze their own performance using a range of metrics• Free to download• PoP Book: your guide to effective and responsible

citation analysis. 2010• http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm

Google Scholar Citations

• Aimed at individual researchers• To keep track of citations to their papers• Free to register your account and set up your

profile• http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/cita

tions.html

Where to publish - Journal metrics

Journal impact – JCR

• Uses citations to measure impact of a journal, mainly for science and social science subjects

• Impact factor = average number of citations in a year given to those papers in a journal that were published during the two preceding years

• A journal that is cited once, on average, for each article published has an JIF of 1.

Impact factor

Citations in 2011 (in journals indexed in Web of Knowledge) to all articles

published by Journal X in 2009 & 2010

Number of articles (deemed to be citable by Web of Knowledge) that were

published in Journal X in 2009 & 2010

Journal X’s 2011 impact factor

=

Web of Knowledge

Activity

• Look up a journal or subject area on Journal Citation Reports via Web of Knowledge

Journal impact – Eigenfactor

• Uses WoS data• Get scores based on broader algorithms• Uses variety of document types• Visualisations – interactive browser useful for

publishing in another disciplines

Eigenfactor

Journal impact – SCImagoJR

• Uses data from SCOPUS• Average number of weighted citations

received in given SJR year by documents published in preceding three years.

• Ranking weights article cited in high ranking journal rather than treating all citations the same

• SNIP – source normalized impact per paperScimagoJR

Activity

• Use Eigenfactor or SCImago to look at different types of ranking available for a journal and compare with its impact factor in Web of Knowledge

Where to publish - Open Access

Open Access Publishing• Open Access movement

– making publicly funded (and other) research freely available

– brief overview of OA and recent changes http://www.slideshare.net/bissetjm/oa-work-in-progress-pdf

– Research Councils and other funders’ mandates, see JULIET

Open Access Publishing• Journals

– Open Access Journal = free at point of access but usually charge author a fee (Article Processing Charge)

– DOAJ, Journal Info

• Repositories– General listing: OpenDOAR– Subject: arXiv– Institutional: Durham Research Online (DRO)– See RoMEO, find out if a publisher allows deposit

Open Access Publishing• Harvesters

– OAIster (http://library.dur.ac.uk/search) – DRIVER (

http://search.driver.research-infrastructures.eu/ )– ROAR (http://roar.eprints.org/content.html )– Google Scholar – not just OA material

Activity

• Use JULIET to find your funder or one in your subject area

• Look at subject or institutional repository or harvester for relevant research articles

Optimising ‘Citability’ – thinking about your title

and abstract

Optimizing your “citability”

• Construct a clear, descriptive title• Reiterate key phrases in the abstract• Improve ranking in databases and search engines• Human decision-making• Easier to find = more likely to be read = more

likely to be cited• Downloads beginning to count as impact (eg

PLoS)Wiley Blackwell guidelines

http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/seo.asp

Australia's Forgotten VictimsEver since the British colonists in Australia became aware of the disappearance of the indigenous peoples in the 1830s, they have contrived to excuse themselves by pointing to the effects of disease and displacement. Many colonists called for the extermination of Aborigines when they impeded settlement by offering resistance, yet there was no widespread public acknowledgement of this as a policy until the later 1960s, when a critical school of historians began serious investigations of frontier violence. Their efforts received official endorsement in the 1990s, but profound cultural barriers prevent the development of a general awareness of this. Conservative and right-wing figures continue to play down the gravity of what transpired. These two aspects of Australian public memory are central to the political humanisation of the country.

Genocide and Holocaust Consciousness in Australia

Ever since the British colonists in Australia became aware of the disappearance of the indigenous peoples in the 1830s, they have contrived to excuse themselves by pointing to the effects of disease and displacement. Yet although genocide was not a term used in the nineteenth century, extermination was, and many colonists called for the extermination of Aborigines when they impeded settlement by offering resistance. Consciousness of genocide was suppressed during the twentieth century until the later 1960s, when a critical school of historians began serious investigations of frontier violence. Their efforts received official endorsement in the 1990s, but profound cultural barriers prevent the development of a general genocide consciousness. One of these is Holocaust consciousness, which is used by conservative and right-wing figures to play down the gravity of what transpired in Australia. These two aspects of Australian public memory are central to the political humanisation of the country.

Conclusions

• Different resources give different results for author and publication impact

• Need to understand what is being measured• Citations can be an indicator of article or author

impact• Journal rankings give an idea of which journals are

cited most frequently• Open Access increases reach of research• Need to consider what will attract readers

ReferencesHirsch, J.E. (2005) An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research

output. PNAS. 102(46): 16569-16572 (original h-index paper)

Smeyers, P & Burbules, N.C. (2011) How to improve your impact factor: questioning the quantification of academic quality. Journal of Philosophy of Education. 45(1): 1-17

Van Noorden, R. (2010) A profusion of measures. Nature. 465: 864-866 (has a handy “field guide to metrics”) . Part of a Nature special issue at www.nature.com/metrics

www.journalmetrics.com (2010) The evolution of journal assessment. (compares SCIMagoJR, AI, SNIP and JIF metrics in table at the end)

Evaluation

Please fill in the evaluation form – your comments are greatly appreciated!

For more information contact James Bisset– James.bisset@durham.ac.uk