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Alternative Publication Metrics
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Alternative Publication Metrics

A special issue of Publications (ISSN 2304-6775).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2017) | Viewed by 50624

Special Issue Editors

Ms. Barbara Meyers Ford

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Guest Editor
President of Meyers Consulting Services, 6610 Christy Acres Circle, Mount Airy, MD 21771-7473, USA
Interests: professional & scholarly communications; learned society management; publishing education & training; STM research & publishing; economic, educational, environmental, equality, and social changes needed in the world
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Jason Wilde

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Guest Editor
AIP Publishing, 1305 Walt Whitman Road, Suite 300, Melville, NY 11747 USA
Interests: editorial development; peer-review; open access; copyright and licensing; publishing business models; digital publishing; research data

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As scholarly publishing evolves, the way research is evaluated needs to evolve as well.

For decades (centuries even for some journals) an article was considered ‘high quality’ if it was published in a ‘good journal’ and other researchers ‘cited’ it. As scholarly publishing has evolved so has the: unit of publication—article, book, data-set, source-code, blogs, presentations, etc.; mechanisms to discuss research—books, journals, main-stream media and a multitude of social media outlets, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, to name a few; and the elements to be credited—article, book, author, referee, grant-id, funder, institution, etc.

Do the metrics we use today, as indicators of quality, truly represent the on-going discussion and efforts regarding how we value and measure the impact of scientific research?

This Special Issue of Publications aims to provide an overview of the current systems of assessing scholarly activity through to the innovation of new metrics and their impact on the scholarly literature. Manuscripts submitted for publication can be articles, research reports, case studies or reviews of relevant literature. All submissions will undergo the journal's regular peer-review process and editorial procedures.

Ms. Barbara Meyers Ford
Dr. Jason Wilde
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Publications is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Bibliometrics
  • Library and information science
  • Citation analysis
  • Altmetrics
  • COUNTER
  • Scientometrics
  • Social Media
  • Scholarly Communications
  • Social Bookmarks
  • San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment
  • Webometrics

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  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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478 KiB  
Article
Improving the Measurement of Scientific Success by Reporting a Self-Citation Index
by Justin W. Flatt, Alessandro Blasimme and Effy Vayena
Publications 2017, 5(3), 20; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5030020 - 1 Aug 2017
Cited by 30 | Viewed by 22093
Abstract
Who among the many researchers is most likely to usher in a new era of scientific breakthroughs? This question is of critical importance to universities, funding agencies, as well as scientists who must compete under great pressure for limited amounts of research money. [...] Read more.
Who among the many researchers is most likely to usher in a new era of scientific breakthroughs? This question is of critical importance to universities, funding agencies, as well as scientists who must compete under great pressure for limited amounts of research money. Citations are the current primary means of evaluating one’s scientific productivity and impact, and while often helpful, there is growing concern over the use of excessive self-citations to help build sustainable careers in science. Incorporating superfluous self-citations in one’s writings requires little effort, receives virtually no penalty, and can boost, albeit artificially, scholarly impact and visibility, which are both necessary for moving up the academic ladder. Such behavior is likely to increase, given the recent explosive rise in popularity of web-based citation analysis tools (Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Altmetric) that rank research performance. Here, we argue for new metrics centered on transparency to help curb this form of self-promotion that, if left unchecked, can have a negative impact on the scientific workforce, the way that we publish new knowledge, and ultimately the course of scientific advance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Publication Metrics)
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1019 KiB  
Article
Selfish Memes: An Update of Richard Dawkins’ Bibliometric Analysis of Key Papers in Sociobiology
by Craig Aaen-Stockdale
Publications 2017, 5(2), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5020012 - 12 May 2017
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 9545
Abstract
In the second edition of The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins included a short bibliometric analysis of key papers instrumental to the sociobiological revolution, the intention of which was to support his proposal that ideas spread within a population in an epidemiological manner. [...] Read more.
In the second edition of The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins included a short bibliometric analysis of key papers instrumental to the sociobiological revolution, the intention of which was to support his proposal that ideas spread within a population in an epidemiological manner. In his analysis, Dawkins primarily discussed the influence of an article by British evolutionary biologist William Donald Hamilton which had introduced the concept of “inclusive fitness”, and he argued that citations to it were accumulating in a very different manner to two other seminal papers, demonstrating the appearance and spread of a new “meme” in circles. This paper re-examines Dawkins’ original analysis and the conclusions drawn from it, and updates those conclusions based on citation data accumulated in the intervening three decades since . This updated analysis shows that patterns of citation for the three papers, and Dawkins’ book itself, are actually remarkably similar and show no qualitative difference in citation growth. The data are well described by a two-phase exponential model of citation growth in which citations accumulate rapidly and then saturate at a slower level of growth dictated primarily by the general increase in production. It is speculated that this two-phase exponential growth, with some modification to account for papers that are not immediately discovered, may be a signature that will help to reveal the emergence of genuinely novel ideas within the literature. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Publication Metrics)
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418 KiB  
Article
Transitioning from a Conventional to a ‘Mega’ Journal: A Bibliometric Case Study of the Journal Medicine
by Simon Wakeling, Peter Willett, Claire Creaser, Jenny Fry, Stephen Pinfield and Valerie Spezi
Publications 2017, 5(2), 7; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5020007 - 6 Apr 2017
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 12447
Abstract
Open-Access Mega-Journals (OAMJs) are a relatively new and increasingly important publishing phenomenon. The journal Medicine is in the unique position of having transitioned in 2014 from being a ‘traditional’ highly-selective journal to the OAMJ model. This study compares the bibliometric profile of the [...] Read more.
Open-Access Mega-Journals (OAMJs) are a relatively new and increasingly important publishing phenomenon. The journal Medicine is in the unique position of having transitioned in 2014 from being a ‘traditional’ highly-selective journal to the OAMJ model. This study compares the bibliometric profile of the journal Medicine before and after its transition to the OAMJ model. Three standard modes of bibliometric analysis are employed, based on data from Web of Science: journal output volume, author characteristics, and citation analysis. The journal’s article output is seen to have grown hugely since its conversion to an OAMJ, a rise driven in large part by authors from China. Articles published since 2015 have fewer citations, and are cited by lower impact journals than articles published before the OAMJ transition. The adoption of the OAMJ model has completely changed the bibliometric profile of the journal, raising questions about the impact of OAMJ peer-review practices. In many respects, the post-2014 version of Medicine is best viewed as a new journal rather than a continuation of the original title. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Publication Metrics)
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1240 KiB  
Article
Accountability and High Impact Journals in the Health Sciences
by Alison M. J. Buchan
Publications 2017, 5(1), 5; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5010005 - 13 Mar 2017
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5856
Abstract
As the requirement for accountability and demonstration of the impact of public and privately funded research increases, the practice of attributing impact to research published in high impact journals is on the rise. To investigate the relevance of existing bibliometrics laws to current [...] Read more.
As the requirement for accountability and demonstration of the impact of public and privately funded research increases, the practice of attributing impact to research published in high impact journals is on the rise. To investigate the relevance of existing bibliometrics laws to current health research practices, 57 research areas in Web of Science (WoS) representing the major and minor disciplines were studied. In the majority of cases, Garfield’s Law of Concentration is followed with 20% of journals in each area contributing 80% of the total citations. The major multidisciplinary journals formed an anomalous grouping with low overall citation rates, although those documents cited were at a level well above the norm. In all research areas studied, team science is the prevailing norm, single author publications were rarely present in the data sets. For researchers looking to maximize the uptake and recognition of their work, publication in the top journals in the appropriate research area would be the most effective strategy, which does not in many cases include the major multidisciplinary journals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Publication Metrics)
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