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Journalology

Journalology #32: Indexes

Published almost 2 years ago • 7 min read

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Hello fellow journalologists,

This week the Nature Index published its latest set of metrics, which cover 145 of the most influential journals, as selected by a board of independent academics. I was never responsible for Nature Index during my time working on the Nature journals; I’ve always had concerns about its methodology, which I’ve outlined in this newsletter. Nevertheless, the Index provides an interesting snapshot of where some of the best research originates from. Users should be aware of its limitations, however, especially with regards to the highly skewed data set.

News

​Nature Index Annual Tables 2023: China tops natural-science table​

China’s adjusted Share in the natural sciences — which includes the physical sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences and biological sciences — soared by more than 21% from 2021 to 2022, enough to comfortably surpass the United States for the first time… In the same period, the adjusted Share for the United States across all of the 82 natural-science journals in the Nature Index dropped by 7%. Both the United Kingdom and Germany lost about 9%, another indication of a shift in the source of high-quality publications.

Nature Index (Chris Woolston)

JB: The increase in the quality and quantity of research from China is well documented. These new data provide additional evidence to show how important it is for publishers to attract the best research coming out of China. The list of the 145 journals that are included in the Nature Index can be found here. You can explore the metric tables here.

The Nature Index needs to be interpreted cautiously. It’s important to remember that the 145 journals publish different numbers of papers each year and that their contribution to the Index is proportional to their size. I tidied up the article numbers listed on the Nature Index website and created a Google Sheet with the journals sorted by article output.

10% of the articles included in the 145 journals were published in just one journal, Nature Communications, which contributed 7,341 articles to the Index. By contrast, Arthritis & Rheumatology, the smallest journal, contributed just 14 articles to the Index.

Indeed, the top 10 journals, ranked by article output, published 40% of the articles used to calculate the Index; the top 15 journals published over half of the papers. Many of these journals cover the fields of chemistry, materials science and physics; the Nature Index is heavily skewed towards research areas where China is especially strong.

Every publisher needs to have a strategy to attract the best research that originates from China. Clarke & Esposito recently published a report, in collaboration with Nicko Goncharoff, that provides insight into the China market. You can read the Q&A with Nicko here. I’ve read many reports on China’s publishing market over the years and this is by far and away the best I’ve seen. (N.B. I have a clear conflict of interest here since I have a C&E affiliation)

​Nature Index Annual Tables 2023: first health-science ranking reveals big US lead​

The United States dominates global health-sciences publishing in the Nature Index Annual Tables 2023, the first to track output in high-quality medical journals. Major government and industry investment has cemented the country’s status as the world leader in health-sciences output… The Annual Tables rank nations, territories and institutions according to their Share, a metric that tracks the proportion of authors from an institution or region on each paper published in a year in the journals tracked in the Nature Index. The inclusion of 64 medical journals in this year’s tables adds 9,200 articles to the database for 2022 and allows publication output to be tracked across the health sciences as well as four existing natural-science categories (physical sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences and biological sciences, formerly referred to as life sciences).

Nature Index (Bianca Nogrady)

JB: This ‘news’ is unsurprising given the size and influence of the US clinical academic societies. The list of the 64 journals that are included can be found here, together with a description of the journal-selection process. It’s worth noting that the 9,200 health-science articles form just 13% of the total corpus of 72,800 articles that form the Nature Index (see Google Sheet).

There are some notable omissions. Nature Medicine is not included, for example, even though it’s now a member of ICMJE and is publishing much more clinical research than it did historically (see issue 20 of this newsletter). The Journal of Physiology is on the list, which is bizarre since it publishes very little clinical research. The Lancet Infectious Diseases is not included (a glaring error), but some of the other Lancet specialty journals are.

I’ve never been a fan of the methodology that the Nature Index uses to select journals ━ the inclusion criteria are opaque and the selection process is arbitrary.

​Introducing “Open Advances” – unlocking Open Access to address global challenges​

We are excited to announce a new series of journals, which will open for submissions in September: Open Advances will offer globally equitable access to participate in scientific communication, with no financial barriers to read or publish. Driven by leaders in their research community, the journals will prioritize the review and publication of research that makes a meaningful contribution to addressing the challenges facing the world. Open Advances will be community-led and community-focused, to create an invaluable forum for new ideas, and networks of researchers to pose and answer the most pressing questions in their field and address the challenges facing the world.

PeerJ Blog

​EDP Sciences-SMAI Subscribe to Open program 2023 Transparency Report​

The effect of the flip to open access on content usage on the EDPS platform was similarly muted. There was an increase in the number of downloads, as the entire content of the year was opened in free or in open access from April 2021, however this was a small increase, indissociable from an annual linear increasing trend (+30 159 per year or +8.8%).

EDP Sciences (Anne Ruimy, Agnès Henri, and Amandine Véber)

Opinion

​Science for all with compatible AI​

At Frontiers, we apply AI to help build that trust. Our Artificial Intelligence Review Assistant (AIRA) verifies that scientific knowledge is accurately and honestly presented even before our people decide whether to review, endorse, or publish the research paper that contains it. AIRA reads every research manuscript we receive and makes up to 20 checks a second. These checks cover, among other things, language quality, the integrity of figures and images, plagiarism, and conflicts of interest. The results give editors and reviewers another perspective as they decide whether to put a research paper through our rigorous and transparent peer review.

Frontiers blog

​Open Science takes people willing to disrupt the system to move it forward​

Like Arcadia, we have never been driven by tradition, but by a willingness to question the status quo and an eagerness to explore how we can improve the system. First, we’ve delivered change by embracing progressive improvements to science communication while maintaining its core principles such as transparency, inclusion, and collaboration. Some of this is about technology. Sadly, the publishing industry has largely digitized existing processes without attempting to imagine alternative solutions. Put simply, most of the industry is still print-first even when there is no print output. Capturing the potential of digital technologies was fundamental to the vision of PLOS’ founders. And we’ve done that. Fast forward 20 years into the era of big data. Science can now address complex research questions in unprecedented ways. But this requires access to and publication of all supporting data as a norm.

The Official PLOS Blog (Alison Mudditt)

​Being Research Data​

A recent Scholarly Kitchen post commented that “the key resource in research is not money but the time of researchers” — and the challenges I’ve described take valuable time away from what researchers love to do: research. My personal perspective is a little different. Researchers have only so many hours in a day; if they can spend one less hour on a research article because we have implemented improved workflows and better technology, that’s one more hour they can spend on research to try to save my life, and the lives of all ALS patients.

The Scholarly Kitchen (Bruce Rosenblum)

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Journal club

​Analysis of peer reviewers’ response to invitations by gender and geographical region: cohort study of manuscripts reviewed at 21 biomedical journals before and during covid-19 pandemic​

We found wide inequalities in the gender and geographical affiliation of researchers invited to peer review, and also in their response to the invitations. Similarly to other studies, just over a third of all invited reviewers were women, but we also found that women were less likely to agree to review than men. Overall agreement to review fell as the pandemic unfolded, but gender inequalities did not widen. The vast majority of invited reviewers were affiliated to high income countries and, similarly to other studies, some regions were underrepresented in invitations to peer review despite being large contributors as last authors on the same cohort of submissions and having high review agreement rates.

BMJ (Khaoula Ben Messaoud et al)

JB: Editors should read this paper, which analysed more than 100 000 submitted research manuscripts and 250 000 responses to peer review invitations from 21 biomedical journals (all part of the BMJ Publishing Group). The first author wrote an accompanying opinion article, which summarises the key findings.

​Characterizing the effect of retractions on scientific careers​

Retractions can have severe consequences on authors’ careers, leading to their departure from scientific publishing. We analyzed data from Retraction Watch and Microsoft Academic Graph, identifying an analytical sample of around 4,500 retracted papers involving over 14,500 authors. We found that: 1) around 25% of authors left their publishing careers around the time of retraction, 2) authors who left had shorter pre-retraction careers, fewer citations, collaborators, and papers, 3) high attention following retraction increased the likelihood of leaving, and 4) retracted authors who stayed post-retraction formed larger collaboration networks, retaining more collaborators and gaining new ones.

arXiv (Shahan Ali Memon, Kinga Makovi, and Bedoor AlShebli)

And finally…

​This article from the Harvard Business Review resonated with me (or at least the former me that worked for a large corporation).

Consider a typical week in your own organization. How much time do people spend in meetings, on the phone, and responding to e-mails? At many companies the proportion hovers around 80%, leaving employees little time for all the critical work they must complete on their own. Performance suffers as they are buried under an avalanche of requests for input or advice, access to resources, or attendance at a meeting. They take assignments home, and soon, according to a large body of evidence on stress, burnout and turnover become real risks.

The authors go on to say:

In most cases, 20% to 35% of value-added collaborations come from only 3% to 5% of employees. As people become known for being both capable and willing to help, they are drawn into projects and roles of growing importance. Their giving mindset and desire to help others quickly enhances their performance and reputation.

Every senior leader should read Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, which had a huge influence on me. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that it was a significant contributor to me deciding to hand in my notice and to start to write this newsletter. Doing deep work makes me happy. Answering emails (unless they're from happy newsletter subscribers) does not.

Until next week...

James

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Journalology

James Butcher

The Journalology newsletter helps editors and publishing professionals keep up to date with scholarly publishing, and guides them on how to build influential scholarly journals.

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