Publishing  in Credible Journals and  Disseminating  Research to Different Audiences 

Dr Sheila Kaka Ochugboju – Research Capacity AdvisorThe Training Centre in Communication (TCC)

OUTLINE OF PRESENTATION

1Introduction – history of scholarly publishing

2Why do you want to get published?

3.What are credible journals?

4. Advice on predatory journals

6. Reaching new audiences

 

BRIEF HISTORY OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING - 1 1323: Compagnie du Gai Sçavoir, the oldest learned society on record, is

founded in Toulouse, France.

1660: The Royal Society of London is founded.

1665: Journal des Sçavans and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London are first published. Each journal used some form of peer review, although not exactly like today’s version. Philosophical Transactions published famous scientists such as Newton, Hooke, van Leeuwenhoek, Faraday, and Darwin.

1731: Medical Essays and Observations, the first fully peer-reviewed journal, is launched by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

1743: The American Philosophical Society, the first scholarly society in what is now the US, is created.

 

BRIEF HISTORY OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING - 2

1848: The American Association for the Advancement of Science is founded. AAAS publishes the journal Science and is the largest general scientific society in the world.

1869: Nature publishes its first issue.

1880: Science publishes its first issue.

1947: Elsevier, the longtime publishing giant, launches its first international journal, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta.

1990: Postmodern Culture becomes the first online-only journal with no printed version available.

1991: arXiv, the science pre-print server, is launched.

 

BRIEF HISTORY OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING - 3

2003: The Public Library of Science (PLOS) is founded.

2006: PLOS ONE, the wildly successful open access megajournal, begins publishing. As of December 2011, PLOS ONE was publishing 70 articles per day!

2010: The altmetrics manifesto, describing potential new ways to gauge the impact of research beyond citations and impact factors, is written.

2012: Several innovative new journals, including F1000 Research, PeerJ, and eLife, are launched. These new journals are experimenting with new forms of peer review, new business models, and new funding sources.

 

WHY DO YOU WANT TO GET PUBLISHED?

To improve your job, promotion and overall career prospects

In 2005, physicist Jorge E. Hirsch developed a simple premise to quantify the scientific output of an individual researcher. “I propose the index h, defined as the number of papers with citation number ≤ h, as a useful index to calculate the scientific output of a researcher” (Hirsch, 2005).

MEASURING YOUR H-INDEX

H-index is, for a given researcher, the number h of publications that are cited at least h times each in academic journals.

Scopus - multi-disciplinary citation database of peer-reviewed literature with tools to track, analyze and visualize research

Web of Science - use the Author Finder option to search this multi-disciplinary citation database of peer-reviewed literature with tools to track, analyze and visualize research

Google Scholar Citations - provides a simple way to check who is citing your publications and graph citations over time

PROBLEMS

X work’s first citation can take years  X Citation measures are narrowX influential work may remain uncited  X The metrics are narrowX They neglect impact outside the academy, X Ignore the context and reasons for citation.

 

WHAT ARE CREDIBLE JOURNALS?

THE BIG ISSUES?

The credibility of a journal may be built up over time due to three key factors:

PEER REVIEW PROCESS? Is it fair and does it help eliminate bias – race, gender, institution? Are manuscripts anonymized?

CITATION INDICES? The advent of the Science Citation Index (SCI) in 1963 has allowed measuring

something called the impact factor of an article by looking at how papers are cited over a certain period of time.

CORE JOURNALS? Since the invention of Bradford's Law in librarianship, in 1933, the notion of

core journals has become ever more prominent. How do we deal with issues of prestige, authority and visibility now in an online

world?

 

BUILDING CREDIBILITY

The credibility of a journal may be assessed by examining several key factors:

PRESTIGE Tied to tradition and the prestige of the evaluators of the journal themselves? Are manuscripts anonymized?

AUTHORITY This is built up by the rigour of the editorial boards and process. It can be built over time

VISIBILITY This is a function of prestige and technology Good bibiliographies, translations, distribition, promotion etc can all help

make an average journal more visible

 

WHAT ARE CREDIBLE JOURNALS? - 1

The credibility of a journal may be assessed by examining several key factors:

Where is it indexed? Is the journal included in the major databases for the field? Are its articles discoverable where the journal claims – archiving issues?

What is its publishing history? How long has the journal been available? For new journals, is the journal mission clearly available?  Is it supported by a reputable publisher or scholarly society?

Is it peer-reviewed? How long does the peer review process take?  Is this a reasonable time frame for a quality assessment?

 

WHAT ARE CREDIBLE JOURNALS? - 2

What is its IMPACT FACTOR?

The Impact Factor is a measurement of average citations recieved over a two year period.  Does the journal have an impact factor? 

If not, are other measurements available to determine if scholars are reading and citing articles from this journal?

The Impact Factor is a statistical measure used to compare journals in a given field.

Calculation is based on the average number of times articles published in a journal over the previous two years were cited in the current year. 

Impact Factors are calculated for some 7000 journals in many fields and published each year as the Journal Citation Report.

 

DO YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR IMPACT FACTOR?

YES? Then you have to know and follow the rules of the insider circles and rope teams that cite each other to improve journal impact. Or, the journal may use other means of improving the IF (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Editorial_policies_that_affect_the_impact_factor ).

There are different approaches to measuring the impact of an author,

though. One of those being altmetrics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altmetrics - based on article level citations and not on those of a whole journal.

To make the case more complicated (might be necessary), journal editors and researchers have recently joined to fight the IF altogether as a biased number that simply does not work to assess an individual's contribution

 

NEW IDEAS AROUND THE IMPACT FACTOR?

The journal impact factor (JIF), developed by Eugene Garfield as a tool to monitor the adequacy of coverage of the Science Citation Index (SCI), is probably the most widely used bibliometric indicator in the scientific, scholarly and publishing  community. However, its extensive use for purposes for which it was not designed has raised a series of criticisms, all aiming to adapt the measure to the new user needs.

Two journal metrics recently endorsed by Elsevier’s Scopus: SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) and Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP). SJR weights citations according to the status of the citing journal and aims to measure journal prestige rather than popularity

It presents the main features of the two indicators, comparing them one with another, and with a journal impact measure similar to Thomson Reuters’ journal impact factor (JIF).

 

PREDATORY OR OPEN ACCESS (OA) JOURNALS

Open Access (OA) 'predatory' journals are now part of the scholarly communication landscape. Although the majority of new journals are legitimate, the credentials of some are questionable.

Such journals and publishers are referred to as 'predatory’ because they commonly send spam emails to potential authors, solicit submissions and request payment of article processing charges, but lack any discernible scholarship, academic rigour or credibility. Authors should not use such journals.

There is now more research done and more research papers published than ever before. There are currently approximately 28,000 journals publishing 1.5 million papers annually.

About eLife http://elifesciences.org/about - watch video http://elifesciences.org/about#process

About http://f1000research.com - Watch Video http://f1000research.com/about

 

HOW TO CHECK PREDATORY JOURNALS - 1Key indicators of the legitimacy of newly launched OA journals are:

Entry in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) – journals must meet strict criteria to qualify

Publisher’s membership of Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) – members are bound by a code of conduct based on standard publishing practices and transparency

Publisher’s membership of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) – membership demonstrates commitment to widely accepted publishing practices

Refer to Beall's List of Predatory Publishers and Journals- http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/ ). Beall focuses on Open Access publishers that claim big spending for reviewing and publication processes and want you to compensate them.

 

HOW TO CHECK PREDATORY JOURNALS - 2

Publisher’s membership of the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) – membership demonstrates commitment to widely accepted publishing practices\

Named editor and editorial board – recognised experts in their field who include their editorial commitment on their own research profiles

Full contact details (email, postal address, working telephone number)

Visibility of costs associated with publishing

Legitimate journals acknowledge their newly formed status and do not attempt to feign reputation by referring to false Impact Factors or inclusion of content in indexing and abstracting services

 

REACHING NEW AUDIENCES

Audience Mapping – Primary, Secndary & Tertiary

Key message development – for each target group

Strategy for engagement – by yourself, with your institution or with other partnerships/consortia

Using digital platforms to amplify reach – social media, online learning platforms and libraries

Maintaining your integrity – Monitoring your reach and impact using about Altmetrics

 

MAPPING NEW AUDIENCES USING ALTMETRICS

ALTMETRICS CROWDSOURCES PEER REVIEW

MORE RESEARCH IS MOVING ONLINE TO NON TRADITIONAL MEDIA AND ITS IMPACT NEEDS TO BE TRACKED ALSO

THE GMO STORY

THANK YOU – ASANTE SANA