this is an excellent point, but there is even more to it. Selection of where you publish as study should be more than just how high is the journal rated, scientists do some research of international, national, and local significance. A national level study goes to a national journal, and a local study goes to a local journal. Sometimes, however, the local study was more important to the local community than the national study was to the national community.
Current dogma is to ignore locally important research because it will not make a national level journal. Furthermore, some studies are vastly important to a specific taxon and really irrelavent or redundant when appied to other groups. These, again, will typically end up in a regional or specialty journal. Are we to say they are not important? >From what I can tell, the "PP" approach to citation ratings is a more fair approach and a more representative approach to ranking journals, investigators, and even articles (than to ISI). On , jiazy wrote: > I fully support Dr. Malcolm McCallum's suggestion. SCI has made great > noise in the academic world. A huge number of scientists in many countries > are trying to have their study pubised on the jouranls covered by SCI, but > ignored their own countries's journal. From the long run, it is harmful to > the development of these countries, and hence, to the development of > science in the world. > > Now it is the time to seek for an alternative of SCI database. > > Zhiyun JIA, PhD > Standing Associate Editor > Acta Zoologica Sinica > http://www.actazool.org/board_staff/jiazye.htm > > > > jiazy > 2007-07-03 > > > > ·¢¼þÈË£º Malcolm McCallum > ·¢ËÍʱ¼ä£º 2007-07-02 07:38:01 > ÊÕ¼þÈË£º [email protected] > ³ËÍ£º > Ö÷Ì⣺ Google alternative to ISI impact ratings may be better! > > Publish or Perish is a new citation rating program based on google > scholar > that seems to give more sensible results. > > I think we are all now aware of the Journal IMpact Ratings game. ISI > pretty much has control of this market and excludes piles of journals > from > their analysis. To be included in ISI a journal cannot be over > specialized, it cannot skip an issue or be late or slow, it must be older > than 2 years, it must be cited in current ISI ranked journals, it should > not cite more than 13% of its own articles during the rated interval, its > editorial board ideally has an international component, all articles must > be in eglish, and there are a number of other factors that can disqualify > a journal. The corporate journals have a clear advantage here and they > even encourage authors to cite papers from other journals from their > corporation in order to inflate ratings (yes, its been published!). > > Publish or perish (http://www.harzing.com/resources.htm#/pop.htm) is an > alternative to ISI, its free, and it uses the Google Scholar database to > formulate rankings for journals, authors, and even articles. > > Granted that scholar isn't complete, but recent analyses reveal it is now > more complete than ISI since ISI only includes cites from ISI journals, > scholarly books, and ignores non-english publications among other > factors. > Scholar includes all of these sources, however, it misses some old > articles, although this is changing with the expansion of BioOne, JStore, > etc. So, from a citation analysis point of view, P&P is probably (in my > opinion) more accurate than ISI because it now covers more citations. > > I did a few searches in the sciences. PP gies a ton of stats, here are > 3. > > h-index = similar to the ISI rating, but not limited to last two years > (slightly modified ISI rating) > g-index = similar to h-index, slightly diffent formula > AWCR = age-weighted citation rate, ave # of citations for a paper > adjusted > for the age of each paper. Of course, new journals (under 3 yr old) will > rate low no matter what. > > First I list some generalized journals then a mess of herp journals by PP > ranking and give their ISI rating in parentheses. If the journal is not > rated it will say NR in the parentheses and if it is too new or defunct, > it will have new or defunct in the paretheses. It is very interesting > how > some journals have decent ranking on PP and others are high on ISI. The > rating by PP makes more sense to me. IF anyone thinks otherwise, let me > know! > > Generalized journals: > > Science (30.93): h-index = 601, g-index = 917, AWCR = 70495 > Nature(29.27): h-index = 593, g-index = 949, AWCR = 72135 > BioScience (4.71): h-index = 114, g-index = 173, AWCR = 2904 > Ecology (ISI = 4.51): h-index = 172, g-index = 255, AWCR = 7780 > American Naturalist (ISI = 4.46): h-index = 53, g-index = 73, AWCR = 2186 > American Midland Naturalist (ISI = 0.77): h-index = 49, g-index = 71, > AWCR > = 814 > PloS Biology (ISI = 14.7): h-index = 24, g-index = 45, AWCR = 605 > Southwestern Naturalist (ISI = 0.30): h-index = 23, g-index = 31, AWCR = > 318 > Southeastern Naturalist (ISI = 0.33):h-index = 7, g-index = 9, AWCR = > 2.39 > > HERP JOURNALS (ranked by AWCR): > > Copeia (ISI = 0.974): h-index = 51, g-index = 77, AWCR = 1153 > Journal of Herpetology (ISI = 0.817): h-index = 33, g-index = 43, AWCR = > 841 > Herpetologica (ISI = 0.922): h-index = 37, g-index = 51, AWCR = 668 > Amphibia-Reptilia (ISI = 0.547): h-index = 20, g-index = 28, AWCR = 331 > Herpetological Review (NR): h-index = 14, g-index = 17, AWCR = 216 > Chelonian Conservation Biology (NR): h-index = 18, g-index = 25, AWCR = > 187 > Herpetological Journal(ISI = 0.71): h-index = 15, g-index = 19, AWCR = > 152 > Alytes (NR): h-index = h-index = 11, g-index = 16, AWCR = 78.09 > Herpetological Natural History (defunct): h-index = 9, g-index = 12, AWCR > = 32.68 > Russian Journal of Herpetology (NR): h-index = 8, g-index = 10, AWCR = > 32.34 > Applied Herpetology (NR): h-index = 4, g-index = 5, AWCR = 19.45 > Cuadernos de herpetologia (NR): h-index = 6, g-index = 7, AWCR = 14.27 > Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (NR): h-index = 6, g-index = 8, AWCR = > 12.86 > British Journal of Herpetology (NR): h-index = 6, g-index = 11, AWCR = > 7.34 > Acta Herpetologica (new): h-index = 4, g-index = 5, AWCR = 5.78 > Contemporary Herpetology (NR): h-index = 4, g-index = 6, AWCR = 5.19 > Journal of Kansas Herpetology (NR): h-index = 1, g-index = 1, AWCR = 1.80 > Manouria (NR): h-index = 2, g-index = 2, AWCR = 1.59 > Brazilian Journal of Herpetology (NR): h-index = 1, g-index = 1, AWCR = > 0.06. > South American Journal of Herpetology (new) : h-index = 1, g-index = 1, > AWCR = 0 > > Malcolm L. McCallum > Assistant Professor of Biology > Editor Herpetological Conservationa and Biology > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Malcolm L. McCallum Assistant Professor of Biology Editor Herpetological Conservationa and Biology [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
