Publishing Strategies for Building the Impact and Influence of a Journal

December 5th 2003Mary Waltham, Princeton, New Jerseywww.MaryWaltham.com

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Journals compete for authors

Opinion leadersActiveInfluentialSuch authors are strategic about where to publish Particular community The journal - brand

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How is the choice of journal made?

High standards of quality ~ process and product – print + onlineRigorous,timely and fair peer reviewFormat – enough space to get ideas across clearlyExpert editorial oversightIdentity of the journalIndependenceImpact on peers

Author services: a tradition of excellence, speed and quality providing authors with

Highest impactMany of xxxx journals have the top impact factors in the world in their fields) Enhanced submissionFast and transparent online submission service for most xxx journals, including manuscript tracking system Rapid publicationIncreased speed through advance online publication Range of journals

XXX publishes a range of quality journals targeted at different scientific communities Widest readershipInstitutional site licences provide a potential readership free at point of access of several million Free coverage to third world scientists via HINARI and SciDevNet

XXX fair dealAuthors retain copyright, so are free to reuse their papers in future printed work and post a copy on their website No submission charges

 Global visibilitySelected papers included in press release to more than 2,000 registered international journalists and media organisations Advance e-alerts of tables of contents to up to half a million registered recipients linking directly to articles Summaries and highlights of selected articles in XXX journals and websites ensure the widest reach among scientists Inclusion in the key abstracting, indexing and linking service including ISI, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Crossref and full use of digital object identifier (DOI) numbers for online linking and functionality

Find out more:

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Why does journal choice matter?

Career advancementGrant supportAbility to attract students and fellowsPosition of author in the published list also a “metric”Impact factor of the journalSpeed of publication In sum, choice of journal affects the

reputation of the author

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How fast must we publish?

Peer review takes time but..

So does publishing in discreet issues vs by article

As does print production

Key points here are the cost vs the time vs the individual community expectations and norms

How fast can we publish?Conventional Courier e-mail

attachmentElectronicjournal –published byissue

Electronicjournal –published byarticle

Pre-printarticlepublished attime ofacceptance

Pre-printarticlepublished attime ofsubmission

Transmissionofmanuscriptto Editor

10 4 2 2 2 2 2

Peer Review-receipt toaccept

63-93 51-81 47-77 47-77 47-77 47-77 0

Journal issuepackaging

30-120 30-120 30-120 30-120 0 0 0

JournalProduction

20-80 20-80 20-80 20-80 4 0 0

Delivery tosubscriber

5 5 5 1 1 1 1

Total days 128-308 107-287 104-284 100-280 54-84 50-80 3

(Based on Kling and McKim 1997)

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Peer review processPrompt and professional communicationObjective peer review – not settling old scoresJournal is clear and open about the role of reviewers – duty of confidentialityRejection – easier to accept with thoughtful reasonEditors use reviewers to advise not do their jobEditor clearly is judge of manuscript and reviewers comments

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Editorial process

Copy editing ~ cost versus value

Developmental or substantive editing~ improving accessibility of research – broader audience

LEX (text accessibility/lexical difficulty) ratings of selected publications and transcripts

TEXT LEX SCORE

   

Nature +34.7

New Scientist +7.2

Time +1.6

Newspapers U.S. and U.K. 0

Ranger Rick (science for children) -18.4

Television (primetime shows) -36.4

Farmer talking to dairy cows -56.0

   

Source: Donald P. Hayes, Department of Sociology, Cornell University

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Visibility

Print ~ is it on the library shelves?Online ~ in advance of print – author driven, meta data and search engines, can the article be “found”?

General media – press release programJournal must be “visible” to be read, cited and develop the brand

Impact Factors: Use and Abuse

by Amin and Mabe

Impact Factors: Use and Abuse by Amin and Mabe

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Impact factor

Different types of content are cited to different patternsDifferent disciplines have distinct citation behaviors

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

IF of most cited journal in discipline

ISI JCR 2002

Impact Factor (IF)

Impact Factor (IF) 2.448 2.533 2.849 3.228 4.312 4.333 13.952 20.993 26.7

Political Science

Math SociologyHealth policy

EconomicsClinical

Psychology

Physics - condensed matter

Chemistry - multidiscip

linary

Genetics and

heredity

Discipline JournalIF 2002

Review articles

Non-review articles

Economics J. Econ Lit 4.312 13 6

Clinical Psychology J. Clinical Psychology 4.333 5 205

Political ScienceAmerican Political Sci Review 2.448 5 31

Genetics and heredity Nature genetics 26.7 12 210

Chemistry - multidisciplinary Chemical Reviews 20.993 145 1

Health policy Medical Care 3.228 5 163

SociologyAmerican Sociological Review 2.849 5 33

Mathematics J Am. Math Soc 2.533 0 27

Physics - condensed matter Adv. Phys 13.952 14 0

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Impact factor

Within citeable content – a few articles count for the majority of citations

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

250 500 750 2,250 Number of citations (bin width = 20)

Freq

uenc

y

Distribution of the number of citations in five years for 500 biomedical papers published in Nature: 100 papers published in each of 1981, 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1996 were chosen at random, and for each paper the number of citations in the subsequent five years was counted. Data provided by Grant Lewison (Department of Information Science, City University, London EC1V OHB, UK).

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Beyond Impact factors..

Much discussion of over-reliance on Impact factor for judging research and research workNew online metrics will also drive behavior Peer review post publication – is the paper

ever downloaded? “Amazon.com-esque” features- such as top

articles, people who read this article also read…

Copied citations create renowned papers?by M.V. Simkin and V.P. Roychowdhury

Outcome of the model of random-citing scientists (with m = 3 and p = ¼) compared to actual citation data. Mathematical probability rather than genius can explain why some papers are cited a lot more than the others.

Analysis of 119,924 conference articles in computer science and related disciplines: Lawrence: Nature debates May 2002

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“Not all articles originally rejected by a journal prove to be valueless” quote Eugene Wigner

Krebs 1953:Physiology/ medicine

Rejected by Nature published in Enzymologia

Michel 1988: Chemistry

Rejected by Nature published by Journal of Molecular Biology

Mullis 1993: Chemistry

Rejected by Nature + Science published in Methods in Enzymology

Cohen 1986:Physiology/Medicine

Rejected by first journal, published finally by Journal of Investigative Dermatology

Wigner 1963: Physics Rejected by physics journal, published finally by Annals of Mathematics

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Thank you!