the impact of factors - hindawi publishing...

Editorial comment

The impact of factors

“RAE2008” is likely to cause a gentle shudder down the

spines of many academics. The research assessment

exercise rates the quality of our research in part to

determine the allocation of public funds enabling much of

this research. The result of this periodic evaluation of

research activity labels us as successful, not-so successful,

or downright mediocre members of higher education

institutes. It is a time to reflect on our successes,

achievements and contributions to the HEI and further

afield. And it is a time to somehow place a numerical value

on our academic lives.

Various factors contribute to our “research value”

including grant income, research students, markers of

national and international esteem, and possibly most

importantly, our publications, with the four “best” papers

being used for an individual’s return.

But how do we decide what is our best paper? In the life

sciences this is a relatively trivial task. Journals already

have their own rating—the so-called impact factor, that is

taken to provide an accurate reflection of the quality of the

journal and hence the quality of any paper published in

that journal. An impact factor is determined by the

quantity and quality of papers published in the journal,

calculated two years in arrears (meaning the latest index

available is 2004). The impact factors of any one

particular journal is calculated as:

IF ¼No: of articles cited in 2 year period

No: of articles published in the same period:

Hence for any list of an individual’s publications, it is easy

to identify the four best papers just by assessing their

impact factors.

Other disciplines do not use such a cut and dry system.

For example, biological mathematic journals have low

impact factors with the highest being 1.762 for the Journal

of Mathematical Biology compared to 28.39 for Cell,

the journal most biologists aspire to. Examples of the

discrepancy between mathematical and biological

journals are shown in table 1. Hence impact factors are

not used to rate mathematicians. Their publications are

rated by “quality of journal”—no magic number, just

experience of the quality of papers published in the

journal.

Each individual discipline has it’s own system for

identifying high quality journals and hence assessing

researchers publishing top quality work. But how should

researchers working on multi-disciplinary projects be

rated for the RAE? Take for example, biochemists and

mathematicians working together and co-authoring

publications on mathematical models of biological

processes. The mathematical component is happy to

publish in top quality mathematical journals and indeed

this can be achieved. But this does not benefit the

biological side of the partnership, which needs to aim for

high impact factor journals. Ideally, this partnership

should aim to publish in the high impact life-science

orientated journals—but realistically would that happen?

Occasionally, yes, but the reality is that it is harder for

such theoretical papers to be accepted into a biological

journal. This is because either the journals assume the

majority of their readership is not interested in these

cross-discipline projects and hence are rarely accepted,

or there are too few reviewers who are able to make

informed decisions on this type of paper. Neither of

these scenarios is conducive to a fair hearing at the

review stage.

At present, cross-disciplinary projects are relatively

limited, with few life scientists clamouring to be involved.

Journal of Theoretical Medicine

ISSN 1027-3662 print/ISSN 1607-8578 online q 2005 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/10273660600626964

Table 1. Examples of impact factors of mathematical and biologicaljournals.

Journal titleImpact factor

(2004)

Nature 32.182Cell 28.389Proceedings of the National Academyof Science, USA

10.452

Journal of Biological Chemistry 6.355Journal of Pathology 5.333Journal of Mathematical Biology 1.762Journal of Theoretical Biology 1.683Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 1.485SIAM Journal of Applied Mathematics 1.189Mathematical Medicine and Biology 0.733

Journal of Theoretical Medicine, Vol. 6, No. 4, December 2005, 197–198

Research councils and other funding charities are

beginning to actively encourage multidisciplinary

approaches to many areas. However, if these approaches

are to be fully integrated into academic research

programmes, then the “impact of factors” has to be

addressed. Either academics involved in this type of

project need a mechanism whereby they can be assessed

favourably, or the higher impact factor journals need

to be encouraged to increase the publication of cross-

disciplinary papers. Ideally a combination of both will

provide an environment whereby life scientists do not feel

disadvantaged to be heavily involved in theoretical

projects. Whether this happens in time for RAE2008

currently remains an open question.

Pamela Jones

Leeds Institute for Molecular Medicine,

St James’ University Hospital

Leeds

UK

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