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Published online 2 January 2008 | Nature 451, 6 (2008) | doi:10.1038/451006a
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Free journal-ranking tool enters citation market
Database offers on-the-fly results.
A new Internet database lets users generate on-the-fly citation statistics of published research papers for free. The tool also calculates papers' impact factors using a new algorithm similar to PageRank, the algorithm Google uses to rank web pages.
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This is really a big and the most desired leap for the scientific community. With the monopoly of Thomson and the erratic output and the lack of transparency had made me lost faith in the concept to citation index. Personally kudos to SCImago !
Thomson Scientific has issued a response to the editorial that appeared in the Journal of Cell Biology: http://scientific.thomson.com/citationimpactforum/8427045/
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For the first time in 50 years, the scientific world has more of an indicator to measure the importance of the journals where their research results are published. The existence of Impact Factor (IF) and SJR, is a good news. The lack of pondering of the citation has been always a weakness of IF. It is curious that Mr. Pringle of Thomson argues that SJR “…seem opaque to the users and difficult to interpretâ€. The simplicity is an argument in the world of the sales, not in the world of science.
Certainly, this is excellent news for scientific community. I believe journal-ranking tool, internet database, should be freely available to scientific community. Even though, as reviewers’, we use Scopus free of charge for three months. Posted by: Sanat Mandal
I am glad that finally Nature is also on the correct side of denouncing the quirks in the Impact Factor. However, if my submissions to Nature were accepted for publication years ago or the "top" journals have not ignored my published criticisms on the deceptive Impact Factors, the situation may be much better today. Please take a look of what I have already published on Citation and Impact Factor (http://im1.biz/CitationIF.htm OR http://im1.biz/CitationIF.pdf) and pay attention to or, even better, help my effort to create an all-inclusive index - Pioneer Index. Shi V. Liu (SVL@logibio.com)
Congratulations for the Scimago group. It is a good tool of work for the librarians.
Finally, some movement in the citation field! This competition was overdue already 10 years ago! Today, the technical prerequisites for a uniform scientific database for all science publications exists. In such a database, citation statistics would be transparent, open and free for all. Then, the current debates and arguments would seem so silly...
Maybe the time has come to rethink the meaning of scientific performance indexes. The open web in fact surely will allow us to build a new set of more "personalized" productivity indicators. I hope in a future in which we will spend less time discussing the importance of bibliographic record public access and more time building new and accurate performance indicators.
Stop playing the impact factor game and usher in a revolution in scientific publishing!!! ------------------------------------- The unethical use of impact factor (http://im1.biz/CitationIF.htm) by some so-called “top†journals has created a “positive†selection pressure for “hot†paper-seeking “scientists†and a depressing force against the survival of truth-seeking scientists (see “What drives scientists crazy and causes them to misconduct? The origin and evolution of modern scientific misconduct†Sci. Ethics 1: 53-58, 2006). While “top†journals are enjoying the high impact factors they are also the “top†retraction journals (see “Top journals’ top retraction rates†Sci. Ethics 1: 91-93, 2006). The very reason for this phenomenon is not that these journals are perceived with more critical eyes but that these journals lack any real scientific and/or ethical standard (see “Why are “top†journals often so unlucky in infecting top scandals?†Sci. Ethics 1: 49-52, 2006; “Logic and integrity in scientific debate on impact factor and retraction†Top Watch 2: 57-60, 2007 and EMBO Rep 8: 792-793, 2007). Both Thomson Scientific and those “top†journals have been informed of their shortcomings (at least by me in many occasions). However, due to their arrogance (established with their monopoly in scientific publication) and the lack of any real competitive threat to their existence, these scientific publishing power houses simply ignored any criticism against them and continued their cheating to the whole world with flawed impact factor. Ten years ago, professor Seglen published an article “Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research†(BMJ 1997 Vol. 314 Page 497). However, not only the deceptive impact factor was not prevented from inappropriate use but also the whole scientific world is now covered under the impact factor cloud. More than ten years ago, then the president of the National Academy of Science Bruce Alberts published a Commentary “Scientists and the integrity of researchâ€. In that article (Science 1994 Vol. 266 Page 1660) he and his co-author Shine warned that “even more damaging to the integrity of science are those behaviors that do not rise to the level of misconduct but nevertheless violate values held in common by the scientific community. These questionable research practices arise in areas such as allocation of credit, the treatment of research data, respect for intellectual property, and mentorship responsibilities. By eroding the ethical foundations of research, the questionable behaviors can create an environment in which blatant misconduct in science becomes more likely.†However, not only this warning was not taken but also the whole scientific enterprise is now largely corrupted. To return normality to scientific research and ethics to scientific publishing, it is not enough to just fix some broken Titanic ships in scientific publishing. We need a global and fundamental revolution in scientific publishing. To this end we have not only started some new generation scientific journals (http://logibio.com and http://im1.biz) but also published a Declaration of Revolution (see Pioneer 2: 1-3, 2007 in English; HTM, PDF and Global Knowledge 2: 2-3, 2008 in Chinese; HTM, PDF)! Let us work together to usher in a new horizon for scientific research and publishing! Shi V. Liu Eagle Institute of Molecular Medicine Truthfinding Cyberpress Apex, NC 27502 USA http://im1.biz SVL@logibio.com
Congratulations for the Scimago group. It's will help many librarians
Better late than never - for comments, for free-market competition, for science. A theory that lies unchallenged will not be improved, and because of the many new challenges to Thomson's products ranking scientific production, there will be improvement at that level as well. Finally. I am not as pessimistic about the level of corruption in science as Dr Liu, but I applaud acting on your convictions to try to change things. In any field. If it's broken and it matters to you, try fixing it yourself. For me, the way I conduct science is not affected (I like to think) by the way I envisage publication. It's an enormous advantage to tenured positions. By the way, it's impossible to add paragraph breaks for legibility in this comment system.