I think we should just change the nomenclature. Instead of calling them "highly ranked" journals or other similar names, we should call them by what they really are "broad-interest journals." or something similar.
The original rational for citation ratings in particular was for librarians to choose journals that were of interest to the most readers, so they could spend funds more efficiently. Over time, the concept of them being of broad interest versus specialized and of interest to a small sector. In fact, the journas with the broadest interest, are of course Science, Nature and PNAS. They are clearly publishing very important work too. However, at least in the case of Science and Nature, interest of a broad audience is more critical than the level of importance assigned to an article. Many landmark papers do not land in Science and Nature. PNAS is a different kind of journal of course. However, this concept of broad interest versus high importance got garbled. At one point, Immunological Reviews had the largest JIF of all journals rated by Thomson-Reuters. By that assessment, we should all dump our reserach and start writing review articles about immunology because that journal had a higher ranking than Science or Nature. Currently, we infer that the most important articles are published in Science and Nature, but this is with the caveat that roughly 10% of all the papers in those two journals are responsible for roughly 90% of all the citations. In 2007, the last time I looked, roughly a third of the papers in Science had not been cited a single time. There is also the caveat that the impact rating is also a better predictor of whether a paper will get retracted than it is a predictor of getting cited. IN fact, it is a VERY VERY poor indicator of likelihood of getting cited. Still, those that do get cited, tend to get cited a ton. THis makes sense because of the goal to serve a BROAD AUDIENCE and to publish THE MOST IMPORTANT Papers. Often, the most important papers within a field, however, are not of broad interest to the general population of scientists, let alone the general public. Which brings us to my suggestion. Papers get cited because the attract attention, whether that be for good or bad reasons, although it is usually good reasons. I had a Chair who had an endowed position at a medical school. He had been publishing all of his papers in 1-2 journals for years, specific to his field. They were VERY IMPORTANT. He had previously published in Science, nature, as well as PNAS. He told me he quit that game because he was more interested in getting material out than playing popularity contensts. This guy had a damn good record, tons of grants, etc. IN my personal opinion, that is what our goal in research should be in regard to publishing. It should be to publish the material where the right people will see it, not to publish it where we get some kind of popularity contest won. Its nice to be popular, but it seems like striving for popularity is almost always a street we have seen before in highschool. People who are popular early, but wane into the sunset as they get older. A few stay popular for their life, adn a few of those actually do stuff that matters. However, a ton of less popular people end up more popular as the age, lead happier lives, and frankly make a larger contribution to society by not seeking to be popular. I am not suggesting anyone should not strive to get in science, nature or PNAS. There is a difference between what SHOULD BE and WHAT IS. YOu have to work within the bounds of reality, but that does not mean you should try to contribute to reality in a meaningful way so that maybe it will function more ideally. If we abandon calling them high impact ratings, and start calling them large impact ratings, the context is different. Highly ranked vs. Broad interest low ranked vs specialized field Best vs. broadest readership journals from high-impact fields vs journals from fields with many researchers. Another option is to devise quartile rankings within disciplines based on impact ratings. I think this is valid too. For example, in herpetology, our journals line up roughly like this by impact rating, last time I looked. It is far from a complete list Journal of Herpetology Herpetological Journal Herpetologica Herpetological Conservation & Biology Amphibia-Reptilia Copeia (I think this has bounced back to the top 3). Acta Herpetologica J African Herpetology, J SA Herpetology Unrated: Herp Review, Herp Notes, Bull British HErp SOc, Bull of Maryland HErp Soc, BUll of Chicago Herp Soc, Alytes, Amphib & Rept Cons. PRetending this were a complete list, it would be easy to assess the field by quartile ranking. There are 16 journals listed. Top 25%: JH, HJ, Herp, Middle 50%: A&R, Copeia, HCB, AH, JAH, JSAH Bottom 25%; HR, HN, BBHS, BMHS, BCHS, Alytes, ARC This is sensible, and it certainly is more meaningful that messing around with worrying about whether Journal of Herpetology or Herpetological Journal have a higher rating. We used to talk about top tier journals, and thsi is sort of an extension of that. I would say, considering that JH, Herpetologica, and Copeia all have the same editors, reviewers, etc. that it is pretty hard to argue which is better except by current JIF. Obviously, this would change if we lept to vertebrate biology journals, a more generalized field, to biology journals, to natural science journals, to science journals. It is pointless to compare the journal Science to Journal of Herpetology. One is a generalized journal, the other is specialized. However, if I take two scientist, one is a cell molecular biologist, the other a conservation biologist, it is easy to evaluate their publications across fields in this way. TREE is the highest JIF in ecology at 19. cell's highest is like 60+ Ecology's lowest is probably around 0.3, whereas the lowest rated (non-predatory) cell journal is porobably around 2-4. Where once it looked like the cell biologist with an average rating of 2.5 was out-performing the ecologist at 2.0 is inverted, where the Cell biologist on average at an average jif of 2.5 is publishing in bottom tier cell journals, wehreas the ecologist with an average of 2.0 is publishing in mid-tier journals. I know this was long, but hey, so what? On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 12:21 PM, David Inouye <[email protected]> wrote: > The Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere (MAHB) is a joint > effort to create a platform to help global civil society address the > interconnections among the greatest threats to human well-being: failure of > ecosystem services, economic inequity, social injustice, hunger, epidemics, > toxic chemicals, and loss of security to crime, terrorism and war, > especially resource wars (veiled or not), to name a few. > http://mahb.stanford.edu/welcome/ > > Their weekly blog http://mahb.stanford.edu/category/blog/ includes topics > that are probably relevant for many ECOLOG-L subscribers. The most recent > one is a discussion about potential negative effects of the growing > emphasis on bibliometrics: > > Our obsession with metrics is corrupting science. > http://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/our-obsession-with-metrics/ > -- Malcolm L. McCallum, PHD, REP Link to online CV and portfolio : https://www.visualcv.com/malcolm-mc-callum?access=18A9RYkDGxO “Nothing is more priceless and worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed. It is a many-faceted treasure, of value to scholars, scientists, and nature lovers alike, and it forms a vital part of the heritage we all share as Americans.” -President Richard Nixon upon signing the Endangered Species Act of 1973 into law. "Peer pressure is designed to contain anyone with a sense of drive" - Allan Nation 1880's: "There's lots of good fish in the sea" W.S. Gilbert 1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution. 2000: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction MAY help restore populations. 2022: Soylent Green is People! 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