RE: Measuring citations

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com>]

I would like to make two comments on this topic.

I entirely agree that the work of Bollen and his colleagues is 
excellent and any presentations from the work worth reading. 
No-one that I know of thinks that the use of the impact factor 
for a journal is the best way to judge the true impact of an 
article in a journal (whatever true impact means). However the 
impact factor (used in this way) seems to reign supreme and as 
far as the journal is concerned it is not some conspiracy among 
publishers that results in the huge pressure to increase or 
maintain the impact factor for the journals they are responsible 
for. The pressure comes from the community. The publisher is 
under pressure (manifested at any editorial board meeting or 
interaction with a society partner) to do everything they can to 
improve the IF. Such pressure can certainly (in my experience) 
get in the way of taking measures to develop the journal so it 
best serves the longer term interest of the journal as 
appropriately serving the community in question and the progress 
of knowledge. Of course the publisher wants to either boast or 
keep quiet about the journal and its IF - see any journal site.

The second point I want to make is that I think Joe is wrong in 
implying that publishers invest in copy-editing with the 
intention to improve impact factors. I have looked back at the 
blog-posting by Phil and I do not think he says that and 
certainly his source did not suggest it. I assume it is an 
assumption by Joe.

I have checked with friends in the industry I am no longer part 
of and it is a new idea for them. Automated reference checking 
systems in which they have for some years considerable investment 
has been made are invested in to facilitate linking so it is 
usually some other journal that gets the advantage. I suppose you 
could say that the whole of CrossRef is a conspiracy of 
publishers (as I know some people do) but I would suggest that 
the massive impact of linking properly was intended to benefit 
the academic community.

Of course the side affect was to make most references at the end 
the article accurate. In the "old days" I recall that at least 
20% of references were incorrect in spite of some journals using 
intensive manual checking even to the extent of visiting 
libraries!

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
On Behalf Of Aline Soules
Sent: 15 June 2011 00:37
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Measuring citations

Lately, there have been several attempts to clarify the true 
impact of journals.  MESUR is one such important effort 
(http://www.mesur.org/MESUR.html).  Johan Bollen spoke about this 
project at a NISO/BISG meeting at ALA a couple of years ago.  I 
recommend this effort as worth your consideration.

Aline Soules California State University, East Bay Hayward, CA 
94542 aline.soules@csueastbay.edu