medinfo

Ein neues Paper zeigt nicht nur, dass die “Inflationsrate” des Impact Faktor 2,6% beträgt - jedes Jahr steigt der Durchschnitts-IF um diesen Wert, sondern spekuliert auch, warum dies der Fall ist: Benjamin M. Althouse, Jevin D. West, Ted C. Bergstrom, and Carl T. Bergstrom, “Differences in Impact Factor Across Fields and Over Time” (April 23, 2008). Department of Economics, UCSB. Departmental Working Papers. Paper 2008-4-23. [Thanks liblicense-l]

We know that grades, oil prices, and academic egos inflate. What about journal impact factors? The average impact factor of academic jounals has risen at about 2.6 percent per year for the last decade. This increase is documented and an attempt is made to “explain” it in a recent working paper. Ted Bergstrom

Die Schlußfolgerungen sind interessant (Fettdruck durch mich):

Our analysis indicates that the single greatest contributor to impact factor in ation over the period 1994-2005
has been an increase in the average number of references per paper. One can imagine a number of potential causes for this increase. These include:

1. As the size of a field increases, the number of published papers that are relevant to any given manuscript might be expected to increase. Thus we might expect reference lists to grow longer as fields get bigger.
2. Internet search engines, on-line citation databases, and electronic access to the literature itself have considerably reduced the time-cost to authors of finding and obtaining relevant articles. This may have resulted in a concomitant increase in the number of cited items.
3. As researchers become increasingly aware of the value of citations to their own work, referees may demand that authors add numerous citations to their work, and authors may preemptively cite any number of potential editors and referees in their manuscript.

Des weiteren legt der Artikel nahe, dass Thomson diejenigen Titel neu in den (S)SCI aufgenommen hat, die auch in der Folge schneller höhere Impact Faktoren generieren als die “alten” Titel - haben die einfach ein Auge für die Wachstumsbranchen oder folgt das Wachstum der Thomson-Entscheidung?

Fachspezifische Analysen zeigen, dass die Subject Category Molecular and Cell Biology zwar den höchsten Durchschnitts-IF besitzt, aber zwischen 1994 und 2005 nur eine Inflationsrate von 0,6%, während Information Science mit einem IF von 0,9 aber einem Wachstum von 7,8% das sehr viel “dynamischere” Gebiet war.

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