Re: Open access and impact factor

[jcg <jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>]

I did not say that publication in Nature had nothing to do with quality.
The word "independently" which I used was not meant to ascertain absolute
disconnection, but rather establish the relative autonomy of impact factor
amplification with regard to actual quality levels. This is often referred
to as the branding ability of a journal.

Let us distinguish quality (very hard to define in the absolute, still
hard to define in relative terms) from value (perceived or constructed
quality). And then let us ask ourselves how value is handled.

And let us clearly remember that impact factors have to do with value, not
quality.

Obviously some publishing vehicles amplify the value (not the quality) of
their content better than others. Nature, because it has a reputation for
quality - that is the branding effect of journals - actually brings
greater value to its content than some obscure journal. Had Mendel
published his famous paper in some equivalent of Nature in his own days,
that paper would not have remained underexploited for several decades.
Yet, its intrinsic quality was not affected by the logo of the journal
where it appeared.

Now, let us look at value as measured by impact factors, and let us
consider the case of open access publishing.

If easy accessibility and retrievability, by facilitating use, increase
usage, which stands to reason, it also stands to reason that papers that
are used more will be cited more. As a result, their impact factors will
grow.

At the beginning career of a new open access journal, the growth of the
impact factor will not be the result of reputation but of easier
accessibility and retrievability. Yet, because impact factors do give some
measure of value, these same papers will quickly appear more valuable
(because more cited). 

>From value (i.e. perceived quality) to the elusive level of quality, there
is but a small conceptual step that will be taken as a matter of course by
most observers. As a result, a reputation for quality will begin to emerge
from the growth in value (i,e, perceived quality). This is already
happening with some Biomed Central journals.

Ventures such as PLoS try to merge this process with a series of maneuvers
aiming at creating high reputation quickly : an enormously prestigious
editorial board, a very professional editorial staff, a fair amount of
publicity to make the name stick. It is probably that, indeed, this will
accelerate the growth of the branding ability of PLoS even more. But the
latter part has nothing to do with open access per se; it is exactly what
Robert Maxwell was doing when he would create yet another "International
Journal of something" for Pergamon Science. This is what marketing means
in scientific journals, however absurd the notion may sound to a scholar
or a scientist. But again, the scientist thinks in terms of quality while
the publisher thinks in terms of value.

Best,
jcg


On March 10, 2004 11:32 am, Rick Anderson wrote:
> > Rick Anderson's question is interesting even though it demonstrates some
> > attachment to the concept of an absolute scale of value. and
>
> Actually, I'm more interested in impact factor as a relative measure;
> obviously, there's no way to really assess the absolute value of any
> particular article.
>
> > If this is correct, this shows that Nature acts as an impact
> > factor amplifier, independently of the intrinsic quality of the article
> > under consideration.
>
> No, because Nature actually has a reputation for publishing high-quality
> articles.  So while it's true that publication in Nature is not an ironclad
> guarantee of high quality, it would be going too far to say that
> publication in Nature has nothing to do with quality.
>
> -------------
> Rick Anderson
> rickand@unr.edu