A Bibliometric Analysis of Communication Journals from 2002 to 2005

Journal impact ratings are often used by authors, promotion/hiring committees, and grant review teams as a proxy for scholarship quality. Journal citation data (2002–2005) from Social Sciences Citation Index were used to rank journals in the field of communication. A journal relatedness algorithm was applied to ascertain the 19 semantically related journals in communication. The mean journal impact index was 0.77 (SD= 0.28). Human Communication Research (HCR), Personal Relationships, Journal of Communication (JOC), and Communication Research (CR) were ranked the top four journals for the study years examined. Network analysis was conducted on in‐degree (i.e., citations to journals) and out‐degree (i.e., citations from journals) data for the 19 communication journals for 2003–2005. The purpose of the network analysis was to study the citation patterns among journals in the field of communication. Data using degree centrality indicate that Communication Monographs, CR, HCR, and JOC (in alphabetical order) are the four most central journals in the field.     

Citation Classics in Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior: A Research Note

The number of citations a scholarly work receives is a common measure of its impact on the scientific literature; “citation classics” are the most highly cited works. The content of Suicide and Life‐Threatening Behavior (SLTB) citation classics is described here. The impact of SLTB citation classics is compared to their counterparts in journals having published the most suicide papers. All data are from the ISI electronic venue on the Web of Science and refer to the number of citations the top 1% of works received in each of ten journals from 1975 through August 10, 2011. Among all ten journals, SLTB ranked first in the number of works on suicide. The principle theme of half of SLTB suicide classics was literature review. The median number of citations for SLTB citation classics (top 1%) was 121.5, with a range between 96 and 279 citations, but classics from generalized psychiatric journals received more citations as anticipated. Journal impact factors explained 73% of the variance in classic’s citation counts across journals. On average, suicide classics received 30% more citations than all classics. Among a second group of five specialized suicide journals, however, SLTB ranked first in average 5‐year impact. Although SLTB produced the highest number of suicide articles of any journal, SLTB’s citation classics received fewer citations than suicide classics in high‐impact/prestige, general journals. Future work is needed to assess what predicts which SLTB articles ultimately become citation classics.     

Medical journals' conflicts of interest in the publication of book reviews

The purpose of the study was to assess medical journals’ conflicts of interest in the publication of book reviews. We examined book reviews published in 1999, 2000, and 2001 (N=1,876) in five leading medical journals: Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal (BMJ), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine. The main outcome measure was journal publication of reviews of books that had been published by the journal’s own publisher, that had been edited or authored by a lead editor of the journal, or that posed another conflict of interest. We also surveyed the editors-in-chief of the five journals about their policies on these conflicts of interests. During the study period, four of the five journals published 30 book reviews presenting a conflict of interest: nineteen by the BMJ, five by the Annals, four by JAMA, and two by the Lancet. These reviews represent 5.8%, 2.7%, 0.7%, and 0.7%, respectively, of all book reviews published by the journals. These four journals, respectively, published reviews of 11.9%, 25.0%, 0.9%, and 1.0% of all medical books published by the journals’ publishers. Only one of the 30 book reviews included a disclosure statement addressing the conflict of interest. None of the journals had a written policy pertaining to the conflicts of interest assessed in this study, although four reported having unwritten policies. We recommend that scientific journals and associations representing journal editors develop policies on conflicts of interest pertaining to book reviews. Disclosure: R.M. Davis was North American editor of the BMJ from 1998 to 2001, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association, which publishes JAMA. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy of any organization with which the authors have been affiliated.     

Stem-Cell Spin: Covering the Hwang Affair in Science and Nature

In 2006 the South Korean cloning expert Woo Suk Hwang was found guilty of fraud and scientific misconduct. The scandal reached far beyond Hwang's own laboratory, encompassing national pride, geopolitics and global discussions of stem-cell research. But the Hwang affair was also a case of fierce competition between two of the world's leading scientific journals. Individually, Science and Nature used the Hwang affair and their unique positions to air specific and conflicting agendas resulting in completely different narratives as the scandal unfolded. In Science, where Hwang's fraudulent papers were published, the readers learned about a caring and concerned South Korean research director. Science was true to this narrative over a two-year period until finally, around Christmas 2005, there was no longer any doubt about Hwang's misbehaviour. In Nature, on the other hand, Hwang was, from the very beginning, treated with suspicion and framed as a cynical director of a cloning factory. Media studies of science and technology tend to focus almost exclusively on how this framing process works in the mass media and ignore that this process is already well under way in scientific journals that then feed into mass media news stories. Thus the news coverage of the Hwang affair in Science and Nature demonstrates that these two leading scientific journals frame their news stories in important ways that reflect (and are reproduced by) mass media reporting.     

A Study on Journal Self-Citations and Intra-Citing within the Subject Category of Multidisciplinary Sciences

For academic research outcomes, there is an increasing emphasis on the bibliometric scorings like the journal impact factor and citations when the assessment of the scientific merits of research or researchers is required. Currently, no known study has been conducted to explore the bibliographical trends of the subject category of multidisciplinary sciences as indexed by the annual Journal Citation Reports of the Thomson Scientific. The effect of journal self-citations and intra-citing within a discipline to the bibliometric data computation can be confounding. In this study, six journals were selected from the multidisciplinary sciences subject category where the trend of self-citations and intra-citing were analysed. These journals were chosen as they published more than 450 citable articles in the year 2007 and had available bibliometric data for a 10-year period. The results showed that self-citations rose as much as +23.98% while intra-citing declined up to ?5.80% over the observed period. The retrospective impacts and influences of these observations were also discussed in this study.     

Le JCR facteur d’impact (IF) et le SCImago Journal Rank Indicator (SJR) des revues françaises : une étude comparative

One of the major functions of academic journals is to contribute to the evaluation of research activities and scientists. Invented more than 50 years ago, the ISI impact factor (IF) became the most important indicator of the quality of journals, in spite of well-known problems and critics such as the over-representation of English-language journals. This is a specific problem for French publishers and scientists; publishing in French is not valorising. Since 2007, the new SCImago Journal Rank Indicator (SJR) offers an alternative to the IF. SJR applies the Google algorithm (PageRank) to the journals of the SCOPUS bibliographic database that indexes more journals than ISI Web of Science. The goal of our study is to compare the two indicators for French academic journals, with three questions: Which is the coverage of French journals by ISI and SCOPUS (title number, scientific disciplines)? Which are the differences of the two indicators IF and SJR for the ranking of French journals? How do they cover the French academic journal publishing market (representativity)? The results of our study of 368 French journals with IF and/or SJR are in favour of the usage of the new indicator, at least as a complement to the IF. (1) Coverage: 166 journals are indexed by ISI (45%), 345 journals are indexed by SCOPUS (94%), 143 journals are indexed by both (39%). 82% of the journals are from STM, 18% are from SS&H. In particular, SCOPUS covers much better the medical and pharmacological sciences. (2) Ranking: The correlation of IF and SJR for the 143 journals with both indicators is high (0.76). The IF better differentiates the journals than the SJR indicator (155 vs. 89 rankings). On the other side, because of the larger source database, more French titles become visible on an international level through SJR than through IF. (3) Representativity: The SJR is more interesting and representative of the French academic journal publishing market than the IF (19% vs. 9%), especially for STM titles (38% vs. 19%), much less for SS&H titles (6% vs. 2%). Nevertheless, ISI (Web of Science) and SCOPUS index journals from only a small part of the French academic publishers (10%–20%). Again, SCOPUS is more representative than the ISI dababase (17% of the publishers vs. 10%). Methodological problems and perspective of a multidimensional evaluation are discussed. Our study compares the ISI impact factor (IF) with the new SJR for 368 French academic journals with IF and/or SJR. The results: The SJR coverage is better than of the IF (94% vs. 45%), especially in medical sciences. The correlation of IF and SJR for journals with both indicators is high (0.76). The IF better differentiates the journals than the SJR indicator (155 vs. 89 rankings). The SJR coverage is more representative of the French academic journal publishing market than ISI/IF (19% vs. 9%), especially for STM titles (38% vs. 19%), less for SS&H titles (6% vs. 2%).     

Personality Psychology in the First Decade of the New Millennium: A Bibliometric Portrait

Nine principal personality psychology journals—Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), Journal of Personality (JP), Journal of Research in Personality (JRP), European Journal of Personality (EJP), Personality and Individual Differences (PAID), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB), Personality and Social Psychology Review (PSPR), Journal of Personality Assessment (JPA), and Journal of Personality Disorders (JPD)—have published 8510 research papers from 2001 to 2010. These papers have been cited 149 108 times (September 2011) by papers published in journals indexed in the Web of Science. Although personality psychologists from the US published the largest number of papers (4924, 57.9%) and had the largest number of citations (101 875, 68.3%), their relative contribution to personality literature has slightly diminished during the first decade of the new millennium. Unlike other countries, personality psychologists residing in the US demonstrated a strong country self‐citation bias: They were about 14% more likely to cite papers which were written by their compatriots rather than non‐US authors in three leading journals JPSP, PSPB, and PSPR. The intensity and pattern of citations indicate that personality psychology indeed occupies one of the core positions at the heart of psychological knowledge. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of Excessive Journal Self-Citations: A Case Study on the Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica Journal

There is an increasing trend towards assessing the scientific performance of researchers and institutions of higher learning in the form of journal publications and the associated citations. Currently, the journal impact factor (JIF) value is the most widely used measure for any academic contents. However, there are growing concerns for the unethical practices adopted by journal editors to manipulate the JIF computations. Recently, a Swiss journal, Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica which has a JIF value of 0.655 in the year 2006 registers a remarkable JIF increment (of 119%) to 1.439 in the year 2007. It is believed that the journal can achieve such a prominent JIF improvement by publishing a single editorial article that self-cited 66 of its own articles published either in the year 2005 or 2006. The journal has been revoked of any JIF value in the following year of 2008. Thus, it is interesting to review the possible alternative bibliographical trend for the journal should the self-cite event has been avoided, the circumstances leading to the decision by the editor to publish such an article and the possible ethical implications or lessons that can be derived from this incident.     

Leading North American Programs in Clinical Assessment Research: An Assessment of Productivity and Impact

To identify doctoral programs with strong concentrations in clinical assessment, I measured productivity and impact of faculty at North American institutions with American Psychological Association accredited clinical programs. Publications, citations, and h-indexes derived from 4 top assessment journals were calculated over a 10-year period (1999–2009). I identified a total of 42 leading programs that collectively accounted for more than half of the publications and citations in these journals. I found a moderate relationship between assessment productivity and both US News & World Report program rankings as well as general productivity rankings of clinical programs reported in an earlier study.     

Self‐ and cross‐citations in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior: 2004‐2018

We examined self‐ and cross‐citations in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) from 2004 through 2018. Mean annual levels of self‐citations for JABA and JEAB were 40.1% and 28.7%, respectively. Overall, 5.1% of JABA citations were JEAB articles, and 2.3% of JEAB citations were JABA articles. Although overall cross‐citation levels were relatively low, 28.7% of the JABA articles reviewed had at least one JEAB citation, and 27.5% of the JEAB articles reviewed had at least one JABA citation. Authors in both journals cited articles addressing the topics of matching and motivating operations. The extent to which the basic and applied sectors of behavior analysis interact depends on how the interaction is measured. Nonetheless, the degree of interaction is growing, which is a good thing for the discipline.     

Elliott’s Ethics of Expertise Proposal and Application: A Dangerous Precedent

In a recent paper in Science and Engineering Ethics (SEE) Elliott proposed an ethics of expertise, providing its theoretical foundation along with its application in a case study devoted to the topic of hormesis. The application is based on a commentary in the journal Nature, and it includes assertions of ethical breaches. Elliott concludes that the authors of the commentary failed to promote the informed consent of decision makers by not providing representative information about alternative frequency estimates of hormesis in the literature, thereby hindering the capacity of the scientific community to promote informed consent relating to chemical regulation. This paper argues that Elliott should have incorporated due process into his system of evaluation. His argument is also seriously deficient technically, in that it misinterprets the toxicological issues, misrepresents the scientific literature with respect to the frequency of hormesis, and incorrectly assesses the extent to which the Nature paper revealed opposing/alternative views on hormesis. Given the seriousness of assertions of noncompliance to ethical norms, there must be procedures to protect those whose ethics were called into question, to fairly evaluate the technical justification for an assertion, and to enable corrections in the event of errors. If a journal is willing to publish assertions that individuals acted in an ethically questionable way, it should be guided by a documented code of ethics and meet a standard of responsibility far greater than normal peer-review processes for papers that do not entail such ethical judgments.     

Incidence of Data Duplications in a Randomly Selected Pool of Life Science Publications

Since the solution to many public health problems depends on research, it is critical for the progress and well-being for the patients that we can trust the scientific literature. Misconduct and poor laboratory practice in science threatens the scientific progress, leads to loss of productivity and increased healthcare costs, and endangers lives of patients. Data duplication may represent one of challenges related to these problems. In order to estimate the frequency of data duplication in life science literature, a systematic screen through 120 original scientific articles published in three different cancer related journals [journal impact factor (IF) <5, 5–10 and >20] was completed. The study revealed a surprisingly high proportion of articles containing data duplication. For the IF < 5 and IF > 20 journals, 25 % of the articles were found to contain data duplications. The IF 5–10 journal showed a comparable proportion (22.5 %). The proportion of articles containing duplicated data was comparable between the three journals and no significant correlation to journal IF was found. The editorial offices representing the journals included in this study and the individual authors of the detected articles were contacted to clarify the individual cases. The editorial offices did not reply and only 1 out of 29 cases were apparently clarified by the authors, although no supporting data was supplied. This study questions the reliability of life science literature, it illustrates that data duplications are widespread and independent of journal impact factor and call for a reform of the current peer review and retraction process of scientific publishing.     

Research Productivity and Performance of Journals in the Creativity Sciences: A Bibliometric Analysis

A bibliometric approach was employed to analyze the research productivity and performance of creativity studies between 1965 and 2012. A dataset was constructed using all publications and citations retrieved from four key journals that publish creativity research: Journal of Creative Behavior (JCB), Gifted Child Quarterly (GCQ), Creativity Research Journal (CRJ), and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (PACA). Major findings in this study include: (a) During the study period, the four journals have published 1,891 articles on creativity and they have been cited 11,709 times; (b) the impact factors of the four journals increased from lower than .50 in 2002 to over 1.0 in 2012; in 2012 PACA had the highest impact factor, followed by CRJ; (c) JCB published the most creativity papers and CRJ had the most citations; (d) about a third of the articles published in the four journals have never been cited. Implications for the field of creativity are discussed.     

Using the ASEBA to Screen for Callous Unemotional Traits in Early Childhood: Factor Structure,Temporal Stability,and Utility

This study evaluated a five-item screening measure of Callous Unemotional (CU) traits using items drawn from the Preschool Form of the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA). Using data from the Durham Child Health and Development study (N = 178), confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that CU items could be distinguished from Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant (ODD) items. The two-year stability (N = 137) of CU (ϕ = .84) was comparable to that of ADHD (ϕ = .79) and ODD (ϕ = .69). Three groups of children were selected based on parent-rated ODD and CU behaviors at the 36-month assessment (N = 37; ODD+CU, N = 7; ODD-only, N = 12; non-ODD, N = 18). Multiple measures of infant temperament predicted group membership with 84% accuracy. Consistent with Frick and Morris’ (Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 33(1):54–68, 2004) hypotheses, ODD+CU and ODD-only children exhibited temperamental profiles in infancy that were consistent with low fear and emotionally dysregulated pathways into conduct problems, respectively.     

Rhetoric, technical writing, and ethics

Many outside science and engineering, especially social scientists and “rhetoricians”, claim that rhetoric, “the art of persuasion”, is an important part of technical communication. This claim is either trivial or false. If “persuasion” simply means “effective communication”, then, of course, rhetoric is an important part of technical communication. But, if “persuasion” has anything like its traditional meaning (a specific art of winning conviction), rhetoric is not an important part of technical communication; indeed, its use in technical communication would be unethical. [By] an advocate is meant one whose business it is to smooth over real difficulties, and to persuade where he cannot convince. —Thomas Henry Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature ^{1 (p. 238)} As a profession, engineers frown on persuasiveness and find it suspect. —Dorothy A. Winsor, Writing Like an Engineer ^{2 (p. 12), A} Michael Davis’s research interests are in the areas of engineering ethics and the social contract. Recent published books include Thinking Like an Engineer, 1998, Oxford, and Ethics and the University, 1999, Routledge.     

Cultural Ethnocentrism and Imperialism in Citations of American and Scandinavian Psychological Research

The present study was conducted in order to document the extent to which ethnocentrism and imperialism exist in American and Scandinavian reports of psychological research. Journal citation analyses indicated that articles appearing in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology referenced numerous U.S. resources but also many resources from Europe and other parts of the world. In contrast, articles published in American journals cited a preponderance of U.S. sources and, for the most part, excluded reference to Scandinavian psychological research. These findings were interpreted as indicating the existence of empirical ethnocentrism in U.S. journal citations, and media-based cultural imperialism in Scandinavian reports of psychological research.     

Predictors of Article Impact in Suicidology: The Bereavement Literature,A Research Note

Citation analysis has been neglected in suicidology. The present note applies a mixed‐methods approach to both test and suggest hypotheses for the variation in article impact in the bereavement literature. One hundred three articles from three core suicidology journals met the criteria for inclusion in the investigation. Citations to the articles were obtained from the Web of Science. Predictor variables included structural characteristics of the author (e.g., gender) and the article itself (e.g., years since publication). A multivariate regression analysis determined that, controlling for the other variables, the most important predictor of citations was the review article (β = .461), followed by year of publication (β = ?.414), the multiauthored article (β = .302), publication in Suicide and Life‐Threatening Behavior (SLTB) (β = .161), and male gender (β = .156). The 12 most cited articles were published between 1979 and 2004 in SLTB. The majority of these papers was written by males, were U.S. authors, and had more than one author. Four of the most cited articles were reviews. The study concludes that structural characteristics of articles and authors explained 41% of the variance in citations. The qualitative analysis determined that review papers, and papers on characteristics of suicide bereavement and psychological autopsies have been most frequently cited. Replication studies are needed for other subfields of suicidology.