The incentive structure of a scientist's life is increasingly mimicking economic principles. While intensely criticized, the journal impact factor (JIF) has taken a role as the new currency for scientists. Successful goal-directed behavior in academia thus requires knowledge about the JIF. Using functional neuroimaging we examined how the JIF, as a powerful incentive in academia, has shaped the...

This paper examines the genesis of journal impact measures and how their evolution culminated in the journal impact factor (JIF) produced by the Institute for Scientific Information. The paper shows how the form of the JIF, which is the result of historically contingent choices rather than a carefully chosen and tested set of features, affected its subsequent use, misuse, and manipulation by re...

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a single citation metric, which is widely employed for ranking journals and choosing target journals, but is also misused as the proxy of the quality of individual articles and academic achievements of authors. This article analyzes Scopus-based publication activity on the JIF and overviews some of the numerous misuses of the JIF, global initiatives to overcom...

In this paper we present the first comprehensive bibliometric analysis of eleven open-access mega-journals (OAMJs). OAMJs are a relatively recent phenomenon, and have been characterised as having four key characteristics: large size; broad disciplinary scope; a Gold-OA business model; and a peer-review policy that seeks to determine only the scientific soundness of the research rather than eval...

Early career scientists today face many obstacles in their effort to achieve an independent career, including stiff competition for grant funding and jobs. Many of these hurdles reappear throughout one's scientific career; thus, for example, achieving and maintaining external funding for one's research is a widely used criterion in evaluations for academic advancement. One widely perceived barr...

Achieving a practical and productive balance in collaborative research between partners from high and lower income countries (North-South Collaborations) requires seeking win-win solutions. This issue requires time to engage each other and to understand each participant’s research priorities and to identify areas of mutual interest. In SACTRC’s experience, key elements include; building researc...

BACKGROUND China has witnessed remarkable progress in scientific performance in recent years. However, the quantity and quality of nursing publications from three major regions (Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) have not been reported. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of scientific research productivity from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in the field of nursing. ...

OBJECTIVES To compare the journal impact factor (JIF) and Eigenfactor score (ES) of Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)-indexed biomedical journals published from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) over the last 8 years. Methods: This is a retrospective study, conducted at Alfaisal University, Riyadh, KSA from January to March 2016. The Journal Citation Reports of ISI Web of Knowledge wer...

This editorial is the product of a recent communication with Journal Editor Stammers. Moss and Thompson, Editors of the journal Quality in Health Care adopted a new outline for quality improvement reports (1). They made the point that clinical quality reports (like case reports) do not fit the traditional scientific publication outline of introduction, method, results, and discussion. Just as M...