Misconceptions surrounding the relationship between journal impact factor and citation distribution in veterinary medicine.
Vet Anaesth Analg 2018;
46:163-172. [PMID:
30661828 DOI:
10.1016/j.vaa.2018.11.004]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/23/2018] [Revised: 10/23/2018] [Accepted: 11/08/2018] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE
To define the relationship between journal impact factor (JIF) and citation distribution in veterinary journals. Citation distribution is a summary of the number of citations of individual papers published in a defined period, and JIF is said to represent the mean number of citations received by a paper published in a given journal. JIF is criticized for promoting unimportant differences between journals, exaggerating small differences in journal citation distributions by misrepresenting a skewed citation distribution. The hypothesis was that veterinary journals have a skewed citation distribution and that median citation rates between journals would be smaller than that indicated by JIF.
STUDY DESIGN
Bibliometric study.
ANIMALS
None.
METHODS
A published method was used to generate journal citation reports from a commercial database, with search limits set for document ('article' and 'review') and the 2 year citation window of interest. Citation distributions [median (range)] and cumulative citations were calculated for Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia (Vet Anaesth Analg, 2007-2017), 11 preselected subject- and species-specific and general veterinary journals (2016) and veterinary journals from the top (n = 10) and bottom (n = 10) of the Veterinary Sciences category ranking (2016) with a 10 year publication record.
RESULTS
Citation distributions were right-skewed for all journals, with 15-20% of papers contributing approximately 50% of citations. For Vet Anaesth Analg, the median citation distribution [1 (0-2)] did not change despite JIF ranging from 1.044 to 2.064 between 2007 and 2017. Calculated median citation rates revealed minimal differences between journals, with only three groups identified: bottom (median citation 0), preselected (median citation 1) and top (median citation 2) journals. These groups represent over 100 places in the JIF (0.316-3.148) ranking.
CONCLUSIONS
Ranking veterinary journals according to JIF is misleading, exaggerating differences while concealing minimally different citation distributions.
Collapse