This might be of interest to you. Transparency promised for vilified impact factor Thomson Reuters vows to be clearer about how science's most misused metric is calculated. Richard Van Noorden 29 July 2014 http://www.nature.com/news/transparency-promised-for-vilified-impact-factor-1.15642?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews Transparency promised for vilified impact factor Transparency promised for vilified impact factor Thomson Reuters vows to be clearer about how science's most misused metric is calculated. View on www.nature.com Preview by Yahoo The most misused metric in science is getting a makeover — although many researchers would like it to disappear altogether. Information firm Thomson Reuters says that it will become more transparent over how it calculates impact factors, an annual ranking of more than 10,900 scientific journals that itpublished on 29 July, along with the names of 39 journalsthat it is barring from the list. The firm, which is headquartered in New York, is also revamping its commercial analysis product, InCites, to add metrics based on individual articles, and to allow users to make their own calculations. But critics say that more change is needed. The impact factor was invented to help libraries decide which journals to purchase: roughly speaking, a journal with a higher impact factor attracts more citations. But it has become a seductive yardstick by which to judge the quality of researchers and their papers — angering scientists who say that they are judged by where they publish, rather than what they publish. The result is a race to get into journals with high impact factors, and almost everyone is unhappy with this situation, says Stefano Bertuzzi, executive director of the American Society for Cell Biology in Bethesda, Maryland. Thomson Reuters says that the problem lies in how the impact factor is being used, not in the metric itself. But even librarians and journal editors are not content, because they say that the firm is not clear about how it calculates the metric. “We’re not sure how reliable their data are,” says Bernd Pulverer, chief editor of The EMBO Journal in Heidelberg, Germany, who says that he has struggled to get his scores to match the firm's. read the whole story: http://www.nature.com/news/transparency-promised-for-vilified-impact-factor-1.15642?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews STEPHEN B. ALAYON Data Bank Senior Information Assistant Library and Data Banking Services Section Training and Information Division Aquaculture Department (AQD) Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) Tigbauan, Iloilo 5021 Philippines URL: http://www.seafdec.org.ph Telephone No.: 63 33 5119170 to 71 local 409 Fax No.: 63 33 5119174 Mobile Phone No.: 63 919 4506688 Email Add: [email protected], [email protected]
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