Bradford’s law, the long tail principle, and transparency in Journal Impact Factor calculations
Keywords:
Journal Impact Factor, Reproducibility of Results, Selection Bias, Conflict of Interest, Periodicals as Topic, Bibliometrics
Abstract
Beyond the commonly mentioned limitations of the Journal Impact Factor, we discuss the obsolete principle of selecting journals to create a fake-representative sample of ‘journals that matter’ and the opacity around the calculation and listing of Impact Factors. We use the example of Pharmacy Practice in 2015 for illustration. We hypothesize that a business-oriented system of measuring the science and quality of scholarly journals may not be the best option to avoid biases and conflicts of interest.
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References
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2. Hansson S. Impact factor as a misleading tool in evaluation of medical journals. Lancet. 1995;346(8979):906.
3. Hecht F, Hecht BK, Sandberg AA. The journal "impact factor": a misnamed, misleading, misused measure. Cancer Genet Cytogenet. 1998;104(2):77-81.
4. Eston R. The impact factor: a misleading and flawed measure of research quality. J Sports Sci. 2005 Jan;23(1):1-3.
5. Quindós G. [Confusing the confused: thoughts on impact factor, h(irsch) index, Q value, and other cofactors that influence the researcher's happiness]. Rev Iberoam Micol. 2009;26(2):97-102. doi: 10.1016/S1130-1406(09)70018-X
6. Mayor J. Are scientists nearsighted gamblers? The misleading nature of impact factors. Front Psychol. 2010;1:215. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00215
7. Chew M, Villanueva EV, Van Der Weyden MB. Life and times of the impact factor: retrospective analysis of trends for seven medical journals (1994-2005) and their Editors' views. J R Soc Med. 2007;100(3):142-150.
8. McVeigh ME, Mann SJ. The journal impact factor denominator: defining citable (counted) items. JAMA. 2009;302(10):1107-1109. doi: 10.1001/jama.2009.1301
9. Liu XL, Gai SS, Zhou J. Journal Impact Factor: Do the Numerator and Denominator Need Correction? PLoS One. 2016;11(3):e0151414. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151414
10. FrandsenTB. Journal self-citations - Analysing the JIF mechanism. J Informetrics. 2007;1(1):47-58. doi: 10.1016/j.joi.2006.09.002
11. Hirsch JE. An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005;102(46):16569-16572.
12. Lando T, Bertoli-Barsotti L.A new bibliometric index based on the shape of the citation distribution. PLoS One. 2014;9(12):e115962. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0115962
13. On impact [editorial]. Nature. 2016 Jul 27;535(7613):466. doi: 10.1038/535466a
14. Van Noorden R. Metrics: A profusion of measures. Nature. 2010;465(7300):864-866. doi: 10.1038/465864a
15. van Diest PJ, Holzel H, Burnett D, Crocker J. Impactitis: new cures for an old disease. J Clin Pathol. 2001;54(11):817-819.
16. Alfonso F, Bermejo J, Segovia J. [Impactology, impactitis, impactotherapy]. Rev Esp Cardiol. 2005;58(10):1239-1245.
17. Elsaie ML, Kammer J. Impactitis: the impact factor myth syndrome. Indian J Dermatol. 2009;54(1):83-85. doi: 10.4103/0019-5154.48998
18. Rossner M, Van Epps H, Hill E. Show me the data. J Cell Biol. 2007 Dec 17;179(6):1091-1092.
19. Testa J. The Thomsom Reuters journal selection process. http://wokinfo.com/essays/journal-selection-process/ (accessed Sep 10, 2016).
20. Garfield E. The significant scientific literature appears in a small core of journals. Scientist. 1996;10(17):13.
21. Price DJD. Little science, big science. New York: Columbia University Press; 1963.
22. National Library of Medicine. PubMed Central. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ (accessed Sep 10, 2016).
23. Bradford SC. Sources of information on specific subjects. Engineering (London). 1934;137:85-86.
24. Nash-Stewart CE, Kruesi LM, Del Mar CB. Does Bradford's Law of Scattering predict the size of the literature in Cochrane Reviews? J Med Libr Assoc. 2012;100(2):135-138. doi: 10.3163/1536-5050.100.2.013
25. Anderson C. The Long Tail: why the future of business is selling less of more. New York: Hachette books; 2008. ISBN: 978-1401309664.
26. Garfield E. How ISI selects journals for coverage: quantitative and qualitative considerations. Scientist. 1990;13(22)185.193.
27. Colquhoun D. Challenging the tyranny of impact factors. Nature. 2003;423(6939):479.
Published
2016-09-29
How to Cite
1.
Fernandez-Llimos F. Bradford’s law, the long tail principle, and transparency in Journal Impact Factor calculations. Pharm Pract (Granada) [Internet]. 2016Sep.29 [cited 2021Mar.4];14(3):842. Available from: https://pharmacypractice.org/journal/index.php/pp/article/view/842
Section
Editorial
