Is my publication Q1? and other questions regarding IF and WoS

Publications, Metrics & PIDs

Contents <a href="#sprungmarkeWhatIF">What is the Journal Impact Factor (IF)?</a> <a href="#sprungmarkeWhatQ1">How do I find out whether my publication is Q1?</a> <a href="#sprungmarkeWhatRole">What role do bibliometric parameters such as the Journal Impact Factor (IF) play?</a> <a href="#sprungmarkeWhatUse">How is the IF currently used at the Faculty of Medicine?</a> <a href="#sprungmarkeWhatAlt">What alternatives are there?</a> <a href="#sprungmarkeWhatElse">Further information</a> Bibliometric indicators relating to the Journal Impact Factor (JIF or IF for short) are used in various contexts at the Faculty of Medicine. For example, the IF is included in the faculty's bonus program and various reports, and in certain contexts - such as some faculty funding programs - a Q1 publication is required, i.e. a first authorship in a journal that was in the top 25% of the IF ranking of journals in the respective subject category in the respective publication year. Here you will find answers to some questions about this publication metric.

What is the Journal Impact Factor? The Journal Impact Factor is a key figure provided by Clarivate Analytics as part of the Journal Citation Report (JCR) for scientific journals listed in the SCIE. It is calculated annually from the number of citable articles published there in the two previous years and the citations counted in the respective reporting year. Until the JCR 2021, the impact factor was usually given to three decimal places; since the 2022 reporting year, only one decimal place has been given.

How do I find out if my publication is Q1? To check whether your publication is a Q1 publication (i.e. published in a Q1 journal), first call up the <a href="http://webofscience.com" target="_blank">Web of Science</a> from the in-house network. (Please do not use Google searches such as "[journal name] Q1", as these often return contradictory or incorrect results and some websites refer to other, sometimes <a href="https://moodle.rwth-aachen.de/mod/page/view.php?id=1220455" target="_blank">even fictitious, metrics</a>). At the top right under "Products" you will find the <a href="http://jcr.clarivate.com" target="_blank">"Journal Citation Report"</a>. Call this up and search for the relevant journal using the free text search by name or <a href="https://moodle.rwth-aachen.de/mod/page/view.php?id=1225127" target="_blank">ISSN</a>. Alternatively, you can also select it via the category tree.

On the journal page, you can see the subject categories to which the journal is assigned in the info box on the right - for some journals, these are several categories and, unless explicitly stated otherwise, it is sufficient for the journal to be Q1 in one of these categories. If you click on these, you will see a table view, which you can configure on the right using the "Customize" button. In particular, select "JIF Quartile" here (not to be confused with "JCI Quartile") if this is not already displayed. On the left-hand side, select the publication year of the publication to be checked via Filter and "JCR Year". Now you can see from the table which JIF quartile the respective journal belongs to and which journals in the category are or were Q1 in the selected year.

What role do bibliometric parameters such as the Journal Impact Factor (IF) play? The impact factor continues to play a major role in various evaluations, as it provides a simple method of ranking journals in a particular subject area, for example, and can be easily aggregated. For this reason, it is particularly important in the quantitative evaluation of medical research.   At the same time, the impact factor and the (comprehensive or isolated or unreflected) use of quantitative publication measures are often sharply criticized (see below). Accordingly, a responsible, moderate and contextualized use of quantitative publication measures, supplemented by qualitative assessments, is increasingly being called for. The <a href="http://www.leidenmanifesto.org/" target="_blank">Leiden Manifesto (2015)</a>, the <a href="https://sfdora.org/read/" target="_blank">San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)</a>, the <a href="https://www.helsinki-initiative.org/" target="_blank">Helsinki Initiative (2019)</a> and the <a href="https://coara.eu/agreement/the-agreement-full-text/" target="_blank">RRA Agreement (2022)</a> are key examples of this. The <a href="https://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/foerderung/grundlagen_dfg_foerderung/publikationswesen/positionspapier_publikationswesen.pdf" target="_blank">DFG has also taken a critical stance in a position paper (2022)</a> and the <a href="https://moodle.rwth-aachen.de/mod/page/view.php?id=1294504" target="_blank">CV template prescribed by the DFG</a> expressly makes no reference to such key figures.

At present, there is still no good alternative to the use of the IF or other bibliometric indicators in many areas, but various stakeholders in science - both researchers themselves and funding bodies or faculties - are increasingly being asked to critically examine their use of such metrics and it can currently be assumed that the importance of the indicator will tend to decline in the future. The main points of criticism of the IF include, for example - Lack of transparency (criteria for journal selection and determination of citation numbers and citable items are not verifiable) - Lack of suitability as a measure (a high proportion of relevant citations are often attributed to a small proportion of publications, meaning that the mean value is of little significance) - Manipulability (e.g. due to high number of self-citations) - Limited subject-specificity and predominance of English-language literature (subject-specific differences, e.g. in the citation culture, are not mapped and can often only be taken into account to a limited extent in applications. Fields in which, for subject-specific reasons, publications are often in the national language are less well represented) Other bibliometric metrics such as the person-related h-index are also subject to similar criticism.

How is the IF currently used at the Faculty of Medicine? The IF is used in various places at the Faculty of Medicine to assess performance and allocate resources. In particular: - Aggregate and weighted IF scores are used in the Faculty's bonus program to allocate available funds to submissions based on indicators. - In some intramural funding measures, Q1 publications are a prerequisite for funding. In habilitation procedures, publications that meet certain IF-based criteria are a prerequisite for admission. - In doctoral procedures, a field-weighted indicator based on the impact factor is included in the evaluation. In all application cases, IF-based criteria are only one of several that are included in the evaluation - with the exception of the bonus program, these always include qualitative criteria. The various uses of the IF are reviewed regularly and on an ad hoc basis by the relevant committees. In addition, the Faculty of Medicine has other scientific evaluation measures that are explicitly qualitative and do not refer to the impact factor, such as the <a href="https://moodle.rwth-aachen.de/mod/page/view.php?id=1225251" target="_blank">Paper of the Month program</a> or the <a href="https://moodle.rwth-aachen.de/mod/page/view.php?id=1285829" target="_blank">"Aachener Tierschutzpreis"</a>.

What alternatives are there? Of course, there are numerous variations of the IF or comparable indicators from other providers, but these are subject to similar points of criticism as the IF itself. However, the <a href="http://webofscience.help.clarivate.com/en-us/Content/author-record.html#Web" target="_blank">beamplots</a> available in the author profiles in the Web of Science are a possible alternative or supplement for assessing the (development of the) publication performance of individuals.

 

<img src="https://moodle.rwth-aachen.de/draftfile.php/1559084/user/draft/773256468/Beamplot_Beispiel_1.png" alt="Beispiel_Beamplot_1" width="956" height="775"> 

These are not just individual key figures, but a somewhat more comprehensive publication profile that can help to get a quick overview of the publication history (articles and reviews). Here you will find all publications from the Web of Science assigned to the respective author profile, sorted by year and citation percentile - publications that are on the right-hand side of the respective timeline have been cited more frequently than average compared to other publications in the same research field and year. The green circle represents the median of the person's publications in the respective year, the gray dashed line the median over the period under consideration. There are a number of filters available and the relevant publication and the number of citations can be displayed with a mouseover.

<img src="https://moodle.rwth-aachen.de/draftfile.php/1559084/user/draft/773256468/Beamplot_Beispiel_2.png" alt="Beamplot_Beispiel_2" width="957" height="171"> 

As is always the case when using quantitative publication metrics, beamplots should only be used in a supportive and contextualized way to assess a person's academic performance. Finally, some advantages and limitations of this tool: Advantages: - Citations of the publication are included in the representation, instead of only citations of the journal in which it was published. - The presentation is field-weighted, i.e. the respective publications are compared with other publications in the research field, so that different citation cultures in different disciplines can be taken into account. - The presentation offers a more comprehensive picture than individual or aggregated key figures, in which a development over the years can also be seen and individual publications are listed.

Limitations: - Even direct citation figures and in particular the (suggestive) medians do not allow any direct conclusions to be drawn about the quality of the respective publications or the overall performance and must be critically reflected upon. - Only helpful with a complete author profile in the Web of Science and primarily for advanced researchers with an extensive publication history. - The plots only provide information up to the penultimate year of publication, as citation figures before that are of little significance. - As with the impact factor, the underlying key figures can only be verified to a limited extent and are in the control of Clarivate Analytics.

Further information <a href="http://www.leidenmanifesto.org/" target="_blank">The Leiden Manifesto</a> <a href="https://sfdora.org/read/" target="_blank">The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)</a> <a href="https://www.helsinki-initiative.org/" target="_blank">The Helsinki Initiative</a> <a href="https://coara.eu/agreement/the-agreement-full-text/" target="_blank">The RRA Agreement</a> <a href="https://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/foerderung/grundlagen_dfg_foerderung/publikationswesen/positionspapier_publikationswesen.pdf" target="_blank">Position paper "Scientific Publishing" of the DFG</a>