A3
what’s in a number?
In the last seven decades since research
is associated with its impact based on some surrogate measures.
1. Prove or disprove the validity of
surrogate measures with proper arguments.
2. Do you have a proposal for knowing the
importance of an article? If yes, present it.
3. Parallelly, you can take a prestigious
journal from your domain and find its performance based on the journal metrics.
Can you find some justification of the parameters?
1. Arguments on the Journal metric –
Impact Factor:
Definitely
numbers matter a lot. Metrics and rubrics are tools for the measurement of
quality. In the research context, numbers do
play an important role in terms of assessment of the quality of a research
outcome. The quality of a journal depends on the quality of an article which is
published in the journal. Quality depends on parameters like, concept, theory, a contemporary issue which is addressed in a volume and articles, the methodology
followed, findings in relation to previous research and implications. However,
a major tool that is used to assess the quality of a journal is its “IMPACT
FACTOR”.
The impact factor is a metric developed by
the institution Clarivate Analytics. Every year it publishes the impact factor
for the journal which is indexed in Web of Science (WOS). The impact factor is calculated using the
following metrics.
·
Journal
– D - published articles in two years
[2019,2018 - for the year 2020]
·
N
and citations of the same in the third year and
2020
·
N/D
is ratio of impact factor for 2020
It is evident that the 4 years of data that
are considered to prepare and publish the impact factor of a journal have
certain shortcomings. It considers only the citations earned by an article
during the third year that are reflected in the database WOS. Nevertheless,
there are other databases that might have citations of these articles.
However, one cannot deny the road map this metric has created which has paved
the way for other metrics like CiteScore CiteScore Tracker, H index, i10/i20
index, Eigenfactor, and ICDS.
2.
Language Proficiency as an important aspect of an article
The importance of an article is measured
through the problem it focused on, method of approach, outcome and implications. An article that addresses relevant and emerging areas with appropriate methodology leading
to economic implications will attract more readers/researchers. Nevertheless,
language proficiency plays an important role in communicating/expressing the
above-said parameter. Perhaps, researchers from an emerging nation’s contribution
to the reputed journal are comparatively less due to the lack of language
proficiency. Below mentioned link
provides the data to support the above argument. Downloads of the article and
authors contributed to the journal are more in the US and UK regions. Whereas
emerging nations have single-digit representation. This clearly indicates that language is an important parameter.
https://journalinsights.elsevier.com/journals/1044-0283/authors
3.
Journal from Business/Management/Finance domain
Journal of Business Research
This journal part of Elsesiver considers
three important parameters such as impact, speed, and reach. The metric impact focuses on the citations
received by the articles in that journal within a period of time. Elsevier
considers three different measures like CiteScore, SNIP and SJR to measure the
impact created by the journal. CiteScore
metric is developed by considering citations received on five document types
namely articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters and data papers that
are published in a range of four years.
The parameter speed focuses on the timeframe from accepting the article first online to the final
paginated version online. This varies
year on year with a range of less than a
week to 6 weeks.
The last parameter reach exhibit various countries from which the article is
contributed along with downloads by researchers across the globe to evaluate
the contribution of researchers.
The following link describes the metrics
followed by the journal “Journal of
Business Research” with Elsesiver publisher (https://journalinsights.elsevier.com/journals/1044-0283/citescore).
In my opinion, Elsevier considers all the
aspects of an article to identify the impact factor.
Prepared
by
Sangeetha
R
