Citations and metrics of journals discontinued from Scopus for publication concerns: the GhoS(t)copus Project

A bibliometric investigation of the journals that were repeatedly suppressed from Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports

Journals indexed by Clarivate are temporarily suppressed from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) if their Journal Impact Factor (JIF) scores are distorted through excessive self-citations or citation stacking with other journals. This paper reports the results of a bibliometric investigation that covers the 18 journals that were suppressed three or more times from the JCR. Results indicate that these 18 journals were repeatedly and exclusively suppressed for being excessive self-citers. Together, these 18 journals totaled 65 suppressions. Two of these 18 journals have lost the status of a JIF-carrying journal. One has changed its title to start as a new. Of the 16 journals that are still included in the JCR, 12 (four) have significantly (slightly) reduced their self-citation rates. Two of these journals are, however, experiencing what the author calls a cycle of suppression. Upon further examination, it turned out that one of these 18 journals is currently using JIF boosting stratagems not yet banished by Clarivate.

The Leading Transplantation Journals: A Trend Analysis, 2011-2021

Background

As the field of transplantation has expanded, so have the quantity and variety of articles published on the topic. Evaluation of publications and journals is crucial to the expansion of transplant research. This study investigated the research output and journal metrics of the leading solid organ transplant journals published between 2011 and 2021 based on estimations of the trends in the category CiteScore from the Scopus database.

Materials and Methods

We obtained data on the listed journals from the Scopus Source List. We then filtered the list for "Transplantation" journals. Only the top quartiles or quartile 1 (Q1) journals were placed in this category. This study focused specifically on transplantation journals and did not include other journals related to diseases of transplanted organs such as the kidney, liver, heart, and lungs.

Results

The number of transplantation journals increased by 42.8% in the last ten years, from 28 in 2011 to 40 in 2021. Between 2011 and 2021, nine transplantation journals ranked in the highest quartile (Q1). The American Journal of Transplantation was the top journal in both years, with a 150% increase in citations and an 11.2% increase in articles published. Open access (OA) transplant journals rose from 3 in 2011 to 10 in 2021. In 2021, OA journals earned 8,555 citations, a 125% increase from 2011. Despite this increase, non-OA journals received more citations than OA in 2021 (p value 0.026).

Conclusion

Solid organ transplantation advances lead to more publications and citations. Regular journals and publications evaluation benefits academics and policymakers by promoting the growth of research. This study examined solid organ transplantation journals and gave a global perspective on transplant journal rankings and compared their status in 2011 and 2021.

Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine: A Brief History of Scientific Journals

Scientific publishing, with about 350-year historical background, has played a central role in advancing science by disseminating new findings, generalizing accepted theories, and sharing novel ideas. The number of scientific journals has exponentially grown from 10 at the end of the 17th century to 100,000 at the end of the 20th century. The publishing landscape has dramatically changed over time from printed journals to online publishing. Although scientific publishing was initially non-commercial, it has become a profitable industry with a significant global financial turnover, reaching $28 billion in annual revenue before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, scientific publishing has encountered several challenges and is suffering from unethical practices and some negative phenomena, like publish-or-perish, driven by the need to survive or get a promotion in academia. Developing a global landscape with collaborative non-commercial journals and platforms is a primary proposed model for the future of scientific publishing. Here, we provide a brief history of the foundation and development of scientific journals and their evolution over time. Furthermore, current challenges and future perspectives of scientific publishing are discussed.

A credit-like rating system to determine the legitimacy of scientific journals and publishers

The predatory nature of a journal is in constant debate because it depends on multiple factors, which keep evolving. The classification of a journal as being predatory, or not, is no longer exclusively associated with its open access status, by inclusion or exclusion on perceived reputable academic indexes and/or on whitelists or blacklists. Inclusion in the latter may itself be determined by a host of criteria, may be riddled with type I errors (e.g., erroneous inclusion of a truly predatory journal in a whitelist) and/or type II errors (e.g., erroneous exclusion of a truly valid scholarly journal in a whitelist). While extreme cases of predatory publishing behavior may be clear cut, with true predatory journals displaying ample predatory properties, journals in non-binary grey zones of predatory criteria are difficult to classify. They may have some legitimate properties, but also some illegitimate ones. In such cases, it might be too extreme to refer to such entities as "predatory". Simply referring to them as "potentially predatory" or "borderline predatory" also does little justice to discern a predatory entity from an unscholarly, low-quality, unprofessional, or exploitative one. Faced with the limitations caused by this gradient of predatory dimensionality, this paper introduces a novel credit-like rating system, based in part on well-known financial credit ratings companies used to assess investment risk and creditworthiness, to assess journal or publisher quality. Cognizant of the weaknesses and criticisms of these rating systems, we suggest their use as a new way to view the scholarly nature of a journal or publisher. When used as a tool to supplement, replace, or reinforce current sets of criteria used for whitelists and blacklists, this system may provide a fresh perspective to gain a better understanding of predatory publishing behavior. Our tool does not propose to offer a definitive solution to this problem.