VETERINARY SCIENCES:

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VETERINARY SCIENCES A BIBLIOMETRIC OVERVIEW
Adam Finch Bibliometrics Analyst Wiley-Blackwell
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Veterinary Sciences A Bibliometric Overview

• How Impact Factors are calculated and why they
  matter

• The problems with Impact Factors

• How to improve your Impact Factor

• SCOPUS

• Other metric and journal ranking systems

• Author ranking systems

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•    Journal Impact Factor    

The Impact Factor
Impact Factor for JCR Year x Citations in Year
x to Papers from x-1 and x-2 Number of
Articles Reviews in x-1 and x-2
For Example
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•    Journal Impact Factor    

Subject Impact Factors Other Metrics

• Immediacy IndexCites in Year X to source
  articles published in Year X

• Cited Half LifeThe median age of the articles
  that were cited in Year X. Half of those articles
  that have been cited were published more
  recently than the cited half-life.

• Median Impact FactorThe median value of all
  individual journal Impact Factors in a given
  subject category.

• Aggregate Impact FactorThe number of citations
  from Year X to all articles in a given subject
  category published in Years X-1 and X-2, divided
  by the number of articles from all journals in
  the category published in Years X-1 and X-2.

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Veterinary Sciences Subject Impact Factors
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The Uses of Impact Factors and the Web of Science

• Informing editorial decisions

• Identifying the most frequently cited authors
• Identifying the hot topics
• Identifying the less frequently cited papers

• Attracting the best authors

• Increasing the Impact Factor increases readership
  and extends journal reach
• Publication in high-impact journals lends
  authority to articles
• The next Research Assessment Exercise will
  include a bibliometric criterion

• Encouraging librarians to subscribe

• Identifying high-impact journals for subscription
• Prioritising library provision of access to
  subscribed content
• Bibliometrics have been an established tool since
  the 1970s

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Impact Factors are therefore crucially important
but far from infallible
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The Problems with Impact Factors and the Web of
Science

• Requirements for inclusion

• Limiting inclusion is important to maintain the
  value of a cite.
• Tests for inclusion do not account, for example,
  for a journal with minimal niche appeal but
  massive citation activity.
• Standards applied today are not the same as the
  standards applied originally.
• Wide variation in subject coverage eg, Arts
  Humanities 50 of all journals indexed, Chemistry
  93 indexed. Veterinary Sciences have 80
  coverage. (Moed, H.F. (2005) Citation Analysis in
  Research Evaluation,(Dordrecht Springer). Page
  126, Table 7.3).

• Indexing for the Impact Factor

• Issues indexed at the end of a calendar year have
  less time to accrue citations within the Impact
  Factor window.

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The Problems with Impact Factors and the Web of
Science

• Impact Factor inflation

• Journal Impact Factors are seeing inflation of
  approximately 2.6 per annum Benjamin M.
  Althouse, Jevin D. West, Ted C. Bergstrom, and
  Carl T. Bergstrom, "Differences in Impact Factor
  Across Fields and Over Time" (April 23, 2008).
  Department of Economics, UCSB. Departmental
  Working Papers. Paper 2008-4-23)
• Variation in the inflation across subject areas
  is making worse an already difficult variation
  between ISI categories.

• Error correction

• Because Impact Factors are released once per year
  rather than as a rolling service, there is a
  limited facility to report errors in calculation
  or listing of source items.
• If source items or citations have not been
  counted correctly historically, there is no way
  to correct for the inaccuracy.

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The Problems with Impact Factors and the Web of
Science

• Subject area dependency

• Wide variations in subject areas eg, 2007
  Aggregate Impact Factor for Oncology was 4.551
  for Vet Sciences, 1.124 for Area Studies, 0.417.
  There are variations even within similar spheres
  eg, 2007 Aggregate Impact Factor for
  Psychology, Developmental was 2.112 for
  Psychology, Psychoanalysis, 1.191.
• If an area is not currently well-indexed (eg,
  Philosophy of Education) this is an entry barrier
  to all journals in that subject as cross-citation
  is not counted.
• Criteria for inclusion in a subject area not
  clear or easily appealed.

• Self citation

• Journals have widely varying levels of
  self-citation anywhere from a twenthieth to a
  third of all citations can be self-cites.
• There is anecdotal evidence from some subject
  areas of Editors insisting on authors inserting
  into their articles unnecessary citations to
  their journal a practice no publisher should
  support.
• ISI does suspend journals from the JCR if they
  have evidence of systematic abuse.

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The Problems with Veterinary Sciences

• Case studies

• Case studies are included in the denominator of
  the Impact Factor but are themselves cited less
  frequently than articles this significantly
  dilutes Impact Factors in the subject area.
• Case reports are sometimes included in the
  denominators of other subjects Impact Factors
  but sometimes they are not. This inconsistency is
  particularly problematic for journals that span
  several subject areas.

• Niche areas

• Journals in Veterinary Sciences often address
  niche topics.
• Citation levels between these niche areas vary
  significantly.
• This makes it difficult to compare Veterinary
  Sciences journals even within the subject
  category.

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How to Get an Impact Factor

• Have a basic level of citation activity

• Address a niche area with the journal

• Be international

...or VERY regional...

• Conform to journal publishing norms

• Regular publication

• Peer reviewed

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Improving Impact Basic Tips

• Balancing the Impact Factor denominator

• Maximising readership of best papers

• Publishing themed collections

• Publishing materials at the start of the calendar
  year

• Publishing Reviews

• Minimising publication times

• Identifying and focusing on the hot topics

• Dont ask authors to increase journal
  self-citation

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Improving Impact Using Analyses
Talk to your publisher about what they can do
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Improving Impact Wiley-Blackwell Analyses

• Country

• Institution

• World Region

• Keywords

• Most/Least Cited Articles

• Impact Factor Deconstruction Prediction

• Look at article contribution to Impact Factor

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SCOPUS
gt3,400 Life Sciences Journals
gt5,500 Physical Sciences Journals
gt2,800 Social Sciences Journals
gt5,300 Health Sciences Journals
Only goes back to 1996 (Web of Science goes back
to 1950s)
SCImago calculates unofficial Impact Factor for
SCOPUS data
Variety of online analysis tools (most Web of
Science analysis is offline)
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Other Ranking Systems SJR (SCIMago Journal Rank)
Like the Impact Factor, the denominator is the
number of source documents published by the
journal.
Weights citations so that a citation from a
good journal is worth more, like Googles
PageRank.
Uses a three year citation window.
Based on data from Scopus for 1996 onwards rather
than the Web of Science.
Designed by SCIMago, a team involved in Scopus
creation.
Journal , country and subject ratings are
produced.
Currently free and searchable.
Iterative process, therefore more difficult to
predict or deconstruct.
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Other Ranking Systems - Eigenfactor
The EigenFactor is the percentage of citations
that a journal receives from the 8,000
publications.
Based on ISIs Web of Science data.
Like the SJR, weights citations using PageRank.
The citation window is 5 years instead of 2.
All self-citations are omitted.
Compensates for varying levels of citation
activity across different subject areas.
Currently free and searchable.
Calculation is based on algorithms and matrixes,
making it more difficult to analyse or predict.
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Other Ranking Systems Transparency versus
Accuracy
IF Year x Year x Cites to Papers from x-1 and
x-2 Source items x-1 and x-2
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Author Ranking Systems

• H-Index
• Proposed by Jorge Hirsch in 2005.
• An individual has a index of h, when they have
  published at least h papers, each of which has
  been cited at least h times
• So, an h-index of 10 means that the author has
  published 10 papers cited at least 10 times each.
• Numerous criticisms have been levelled at the
  metric, but it is still very widely used.

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Author Ranking Systems

• G-Index
• Proposed by Leo Egghe in 2006.
• An individual has a g-index of g when they have
  published at least g papers which have in total
  been cited more than g2 times.
• So, a g-index of 10 means that an author has
  produced 10 publications, which have in total
  accrued at least 100 citations amongst them.

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Author Ranking Systems

• H(2)-Index
• Proposed by Marek Kosmulksi in 2006.
• An individual has an index of k when each
  publication in a ranked list has been cited at
  least k2 times.
• So, an H(2) of 10 means that the 10th most cited
  article has been cited at least 100 times.

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Author Ranking Systems
a index
m index
m quotient
?
ar index
r index
hw index
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The Road Ahead

• At the moment, its the Wild West the
  uncivilised frontier being tapped for gold

• ISI will face the new competition from SCOPUS,
  hopefully initiating a service/facility arms
  race

• Development of yet more new methodologies eg,
  Google Scholar and INK for indexing, more author
  indexes, more ranking systems

• Over time, the merits of some systems will win
  out and consensus will emerge

• So should Editors focus on metrics or serving the
  community? To hedge your bets, go for the latter

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Thank You
Adam Finch Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford,
UK afinch_at_wiley.com