[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • COMMENT

Rethinking impact factors: better ways to judge a journal

We need a broader, more-transparent suite of metrics to improve science publishing, say Paul Wouters, colleagues and co-signatories.
  1. Paul Wouters

    1. Paul Wouters is professor of scientometrics and dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Leiden University, the Netherlands.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Cassidy R. Sugimoto

    1. Cassidy R. Sugimoto is associate professor of informatics at Indiana University Bloomington, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  3. Vincent Larivière

    1. Vincent Larivière is associate professor of information science at the University of Montreal, Canada.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  4. Marie E. McVeigh

    1. Marie E. McVeigh is head of editorial integrity at the Institute for Scientific Information, part of the Web of Science group, Clarivate Analytics, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  5. Bernd Pulverer

    1. Bernd Pulverer is chief editor of The EMBO Journal and head of scientific publications at EMBO, Heidelberg, Germany.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  6. Sarah de Rijcke

    1. Sarah de Rijcke is professor of science and evaluation studies and director at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  7. Ludo Waltman

    1. Ludo Waltman is professor of quantitative science studies and deputy director at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Illustration by David Parkins

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

Global efforts are afoot to create a constructive role for journal metrics in scholarly publishing and to displace the dominance of impact factors in the assessment of research. To this end, a group of bibliometric and evaluation specialists, scientists, publishers, scientific societies and research-analytics providers are working to hammer out a broader suite of journal indicators, and other ways to judge a journal’s qualities. It is a challenging task: our interests vary and often conflict, and change requires a concerted effort across publishing, academia, funding agencies, policymakers and providers of bibliometric data.

Access options

Access through your institution

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 569, 621-623 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01643-3

A list of co-signatories accompanies this Comment (see Supplementary information).

References

  1. Sugimoto, C. et al. F1000Research https://doi.org/10.7490/f1000research.1116751.1 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Wilsdon, J. et al. The Metric Tide: Report of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management (2015).

  3. Gingras, Y. Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and Abuses (MIT Press, 2016).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Larivière, V. & Sugimoto, C. R. in Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators (eds Glänzel, W., Moed, H. F., Schmoch, U. & Thelwall, M.) (Springer, in the press).

  5. Campbell, D. T. Eval. Program Plan. 2, 67–90 (1979).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Müller, R. & de Rijcke, S. Res. Eval. 26, 157–168 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Fong, E. A. & Wilhite, A. W. PLoS ONE 12, e0187394 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Hicks, D., Wouters, P. Waltman, L., de Rijcke, S. & Rafols, I. Nature 520, 429–431 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. McKiernan, E. C. et al. PeerJ Preprints 7, e27638v2 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Larivière, V. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/062109 (2016).

Download references

Supplementary Information

  1. Supplementary list of co-signatories-1

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links