1. Increasing the impact of
journal articles
James Bisset
Academic Liaison Librarian
(Research Support)

2. Session outline
• Importance of getting your research read
• Individual citations
• Where to publish
– High ranking: journal citation reports
– Improving your citation count: Open Access and
repositories
• Optimising “citability”

3. Quick survey…
• WoK/WoS • JIF
• JCR • Eigenfactor
• SciVerse Scopus • SCImagoJR
• PoP software • SNIP
• JULIET • h – index

4. Importance of getting
your research read

5. Getting your research read
• Making research visible
• Why?
– Establishing research profile
– Research Evaluation Framework
• How?
– Reputable publishing routes
– New routes
– Networks

6. (2008) Taylor and Francis LibSite Newsletter, issue 9. p. 2

7. (2008) Taylor and Francis LibSite Newsletter, issue 9. p. 3

8. Things to consider
• Impact does not always = excellence
• Citation cultures vary across disciplines
• Publication cultures vary too
• Research careers have different stages

9. Individual
citations

10. Citations to individual papers
• Links between papers that have something in
common
• Tool to make connections
• Building on or challenging research
• Help make a judgement about impact an
article has made
• Sum of citations useful indication of impact of
an author

11. Web of Science
• 1955 Eugene Garfield - the idea of creating a
citation index for science to…
“eliminate the uncritical citation of fraudulent,
incomplete or obsolete data by making it
possible for the conscientious scholar to be
aware of criticisms of earlier papers.”
Garfield, E (1955) ‘Citation Indexes for Science’ Science, New Series, Vol. 122, No. 3159, pp. 108-111

12. Web of Science
• 1955 Eugene Garfield - the idea of measuring
the “impact” of journal articles using citations
• 1960s Science Citation Index developed to
highlight “formal, explicit linkages between
papers that have particular points in common”
– (now part of Thomson Reuters WoS)
• 1975 Journal Citation Reports – uses WoS data
to rank journals within subject categories

13. Science subjects
Social-science subjects
(2008) Taylor and Francis LibSite Newsletter, issue 9. p. 5

14. SciVerse Scopus
• Launched in 2004 by Elsevier
• Serious competition to Web of Science
• Main emphasis on science initially but broader
now
• Currently indexes 18,700 ‘active’ journals plus
conference proceedings
• No access via Durham as we have WoK

15. Google Scholar
• Data for broader range of documents e.g.
books, reports
• Contributes to higher number of citations
• More useful for recent documents
• Useful for subjects not covered by WoS
• Trace developments/versions of same paper

16. Publishers
• List of references
• Can pull citation data from other providers
• Some link to references and cited works
• Alerts depend on citation in another journal
published by same publisher

17. Things you can do
• Count citations
• Link to other related articles
• Set up citation alerts
• Search for cited references
• See citation reports for journals and authors
• Citation mapping
• Web of Science DEMO

18. Activity
• Use Web of Science to try a citation search for
an article and look at the citation report
• Look for the same article in Google Scholar.
How do the number of citations vary using
Google Scholar?

19. Measuring & monitoring citations
• Counting citations – WoS, Scopus, JStor, SD,
publishers and GS
• Linked references – WoS, Scopus, JStor,
publishers
• Citation alerts –WoS, Scopus, publishers & GS
• Cited Reference Search – WoS, Scopus
• Citation Report – WoS, Scopus
• Map citations to find related material – WoS

20. Individual citations
– author metrics

21. Citation metrics
• h-index (Hirsch, 2005)
– An author’s number of articles (h) that have received at
least h citations
– a researcher with an h-index of 10 has published 10
articles that have each been cited at least 10 times
• g-index (Egghe, 2006)
– The highest number (g) of papers that together received g2
or more citations
– a researcher with a g-index of, say, 10 has published 10
papers that together have been cited at least 100 times

22. Author: Smith, J
Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which
have been cited as follows:
a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3
H-index:
“no. of articles (n) that have received at least n
citations”

23. Author: Smith, J
Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which
have been cited as follows:
a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3
H-index: 3 (at least 3 References with 3 or more citations)
“no. of articles (n) that have received at least n
citations”

24. Author: Smith, J
Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which
have been cited as follows:
a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3
H-index: not 4 ( only 3 References with 4 or more citations)
“no. of articles (n) that have received at least n
citations”

25. Author: Smith, J
Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which
have been cited as follows:
a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3
G-index:
“The highest number (g) of papers that together
received g2 or more citations”

26. Author: Smith, J
Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which
have been cited as follows:
a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3
G-index: 5 (5x5 =25… top 5 cited articles= 31)
“The highest number (g) of papers that together
received g2 or more citations”

27. Author: Smith, J
Has written and published 9 articles (a-i), which
have been cited as follows:
a:3, b:6, c:6, d:2, e:13, f:3, g:0, h:1, i:3
G-index: not 6 (6x6 =36… top 6 cited articles= 34)
“The highest number (g) of papers that together
received g2 or more citations”

28. Publish or Perish software
• Anne-Wil Harzing (2006) current version: 3.8.1 (Oct
2012)
• Aimed at individual researchers
• Analyze their own performance using a range of metrics
• Free to download
• PoP Book: your guide to effective and responsible
citation analysis. 2010
• http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm

29. Google Scholar Citations
• Aimed at individual researchers
• To keep track of citations to their papers
• Free to register your account and set up your
profile
• http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/cita
tions.html

30. Where to publish -
Journal metrics

31. Journal impact – JCR
• Uses citations to measure impact of a journal,
mainly for science and social science subjects
• Impact factor = average number of citations in
a year given to those papers in a journal that
were published during the two preceding years
• A journal that is cited once, on average, for
each article published has an JIF of 1.

32. Impact factor
Citations in 2011 (in journals indexed
in Web of Knowledge) to all articles
Journal published by Journal X in 2009 & 2010
X’s 2011
impact =
factor Number of articles (deemed to be citable
by Web of Knowledge) that were
published in Journal X in 2009 & 2010
Web of Knowledge

33. Activity
• Look up a journal or subject area on Journal
Citation Reports via Web of Knowledge

34. Journal impact – Eigenfactor
• Uses WoS data
• Get scores based on broader algorithms
• Uses variety of document types
• Visualisations – interactive browser useful for
publishing in another disciplines
Eigenfactor

35. Journal impact – SCImagoJR
• Uses data from SCOPUS
• Average number of weighted citations
received in given SJR year by documents
published in preceding three years.
• Ranking weights article cited in high ranking
journal rather than treating all citations the
same
• SNIP – source normalized impact per paper
ScimagoJR

36. Activity
• Use Eigenfactor or SCImago to look at
different types of ranking available for a
journal and compare with its impact factor in
Web of Knowledge

37. Where to publish
- Open Access

38. Open Access Publishing
• Open Access movement
– making publicly funded (and other) research freely
available
– brief overview of OA and recent changes
http://www.slideshare.net/bissetjm/oa-work-in-
progress-pdf
– Research Councils and other funders’
mandates, see JULIET

39. Open Access Publishing
• Journals
– Open Access Journal = free at point of access but
usually charge author a fee (Article Processing Charge)
– DOAJ, Journal Info
• Repositories
– General listing: OpenDOAR
– Subject: arXiv
– Institutional: Durham Research Online (DRO)
– See RoMEO, find out if a publisher allows deposit

40. Open Access Publishing
• Harvesters
– OAIster (http://library.dur.ac.uk/search)
– DRIVER (http://search.driver.research-
infrastructures.eu/ )
– ROAR (http://roar.eprints.org/content.html )
– Google Scholar – not just OA material

41. Activity
• Use JULIET to find your funder or one in your
subject area
• Look at subject or institutional repository or
harvester for relevant research articles

42. Optimising ‘Citability’ –
thinking about your title
and abstract

43. Optimizing your “citability”
• Construct a clear, descriptive title
• Reiterate key phrases in the abstract
• Improve ranking in databases and search engines
• Human decision-making
• Easier to find = more likely to be read = more
likely to be cited
• Downloads beginning to count as impact (eg
PLoS)
Wiley Blackwell guidelines
http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/seo.asp

44. Australia's Forgotten Victims
Ever since the British colonists in Australia became aware of the
disappearance of the indigenous peoples in the 1830s, they have
contrived to excuse themselves by pointing to the effects of disease and
displacement. Many colonists called for the extermination of Aborigines
when they impeded settlement by offering resistance, yet there was no
widespread public acknowledgement of this as a policy until the later
1960s, when a critical school of historians began serious investigations of
frontier violence. Their efforts received official endorsement in the 1990s,
but profound cultural barriers prevent the development of a general
awareness of this. Conservative and right-wing figures continue to play
down the gravity of what transpired. These two aspects of Australian
public memory are central to the political humanisation of the country.

45. Genocide and Holocaust
Consciousness in Australia
Ever since the British colonists in Australia became aware of the
disappearance of the indigenous peoples in the 1830s, they have contrived
to excuse themselves by pointing to the effects of disease and
displacement. Yet although genocide was not a term used in the nineteenth
century, extermination was, and many colonists called for the extermination
of Aborigines when they impeded settlement by offering
resistance. Consciousness of genocide was suppressed during the twentieth
century until the later 1960s, when a critical school of historians began
serious investigations of frontier violence. Their efforts received official
endorsement in the 1990s, but profound cultural barriers prevent the
development of a general genocide consciousness. One of these
is Holocaust consciousness, which is used by conservative and right-wing
figures to play down the gravity of what transpired in Australia. These two
aspects of Australian public memory are central to the political
humanisation of the country.

46. Conclusions
• Different resources give different results for author
and publication impact
• Need to understand what is being measured
• Citations can be an indicator of article or author
impact
• Journal rankings give an idea of which journals are
cited most frequently
• Open Access increases reach of research
• Need to consider what will attract readers

47. References
Hirsch, J.E. (2005) An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research
output. PNAS. 102(46): 16569-16572 (original h-index paper)
Smeyers, P & Burbules, N.C. (2011) How to improve your impact factor:
questioning the quantification of academic quality. Journal of Philosophy
of Education. 45(1): 1-17
Van Noorden, R. (2010) A profusion of measures. Nature. 465: 864-866 (has a
handy “field guide to metrics”) . Part of a Nature special issue at
www.nature.com/metrics
www.journalmetrics.com (2010) The evolution of journal assessment.
(compares SCIMagoJR, AI, SNIP and JIF metrics in table at the end)

48. Evaluation
Please fill in the evaluation form – your
comments are greatly appreciated!
For more information contact James Bisset
– James.bisset@durham.ac.uk