Mixing journal, article, and author citations, and other pitfalls in the bibliographic impact factor

Abstract

News of the death of biomedical journals seem premature. Revamped traditional scientific journals remain highly valued sources and vehicles of information, critical debate, and knowledge. Some analyses seem to place a disproportionate emphasis on technological and formal issues, as compared to the importance ascribed to matters of power. Not all journals must necessarily have a large circulation. There are many examples of efficient, high-quality journals with a great impact on relatively small audiences for whom the journal is thought-provoking, useful, and pleasant to read. How can we achieve a better understanding of an article s spectrum of impacts? A certain mixing of three distinct entities (journals, articles, and authors) has often pervaded judgments. Data used by the Institute for Scientific Information present weaknesses in their accuracy. The two-year limit for citations to count towards the bibliographic impact factor favors "fast-moving", "basic" biomedical disciplines and is less appropriate for public health studies. Increasing attention is given to the specific number of citations received by each individual article. It is possible to make progress towards more valid, accurate, fair, and relevant assessments.

Brazilian knowledge production in the field of child and adolescent health

“…Assim, o fator de impacto, que é visto como um indicador da visibilidade e difusão de conhecimento científico, é basicamente uma razão entre citações e itens publicados passíveis de citação. Sua força reside sobretudo na abrangência, estabilidade e aparente reprodutibilidade; por outro lado, algumas falhas óbvias, junto com seu uso leviano, provocaram uma torrente de críticas e discussões controversas sobre sua exatidão 6,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] . A Thomson Scientific, antes conhecida por Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), calcula e publica, no Journal Citation Reports, o fator de impacto dos 7.500 periódicos mais citados do mundo, que empregam a revisão por pares, em aproximadamente 200 áreas.…”

H-index in the Brazilian Academy of Sciences: comments and concerns

“…They are of various nature, starting with the problem that not all relevant journals make it into ISI (Porta et al 2003) to periodicals with high impact factors due to an editorial line more concerned with reviews than original research (e.g., Pinto and Andrade 1999). Even the initial of an author's last name has been regarded as influential in citation potential (Tregenza 1997) and double-barreled names could end up being incorrectly listed in publication databases (Lorenzini 1996), including ISI.…”

Impact of SciELO and MEDLINE indexing on submissions to Jornal de Pediatria

“…Em primeiro lugar, muitos já apontaram que contar citações é uma forma falha de avaliar o mérito acadêmico, entre outros porque não se mede a citação a artigos específi-cos [20][21][22][23][24][25] . Em segundo lugar, se um artigo é citado com freqüência como exemplo de pesquisa de má qualidade, mesmo assim a menção repetida a esse artigo irá aumentar o fator de impacto da revista.…”