Should editors influence journal impact factors?

Abstract

The journal impact factor is widely used as a performance indicator for single authors (despite its unsuitably in this respect). Hence, authors are increasingly exercised if there is any sign that impact factors are being manipulated. Editors who ask authors to cite relevant papers from their own journal are accused of acting unethically. This is surprising because, besides publishers, authors are the primary beneficiaries of an increased impact factor of the journal in which they publish, and because the citation process is biased anyway. There is growing evidence that quality and relevance are not always the reasons for choosing references. Authors' biases and personal environments as well as strategic considerations are major factors. As long as an editor does not force authors to cite irrelevant papers from their own journal, I consider it as a matter of caretaking for the journal and its authors if an editor brings recent papers to the authors' attention. It would be unfair to authors and disloyal to the publisher if an editor did not try to increase the impact of his/her own journal.

Editorial: Self-citation in Publishing

“…It would be unfair to authors and disloyal to publishers if editors did not act in this direction [33]. However, it is easy for editors to manipulate the IF.…”

“…Excessive self-citation may cause a large shift in a journal's IF, particularly if the total rate of citations of that specific journal is low [11,32,51]; one journal's IF increased 18 ranks by one paper containing 303 self-citations [32]. There is clear documentation of editorial feedback to corresponding authors to include selfcitations [4,22,33,35,37]. In addition some editors have used their journal as a personal vehicle for dissemination and promotion of their own work, and placing their articles higher in the publication order [7,8].…”

“…Nonsource items, including letters, news, abstracts, book reviews, and editorials, are not typically included in the denominator, but if they contain citations, they may be included in the numerator, thus increasing the IF [23,42,47,52]. Increasing the nonsource items, such as by encouraging letters to the editor containing self-citations of the articles being discussed, reference to previous editorials, or running large correspondence sections, is an easy way to increase the IF by increasing self-citation without increasing the source items [11,27,33,35,42,47,51].…”

The impact factor

“…Krell [5] completed an exercise to examine why we choose a specific article to reference when writing an article and the result is very provocative. Of course, we want to cite our own articles or those of our collaborators and friends in order to promote careers ("you cite me, I cite you").…”

“…Imposing self-citation ("coercive citation") as a requirement before accepting a paper is of course malpractice. Saying this, Frank-Thorsten Krell in 2010 formulated the following wise conclusion [5]: "As long as an editor does not force authors to cite irrelevant papers from their own journal, I consider it as a matter of caretaking for the journal and its authors if an editor brings recent papers to the authors' attention. "…”