A new [OA] Internet database lets users generate on-the-fly citation statistics of published research papers for free. The tool also calculates papers' impact factors using a new algorithm similar to PageRank, the algorithm Google uses to rank web pages. The open-access database is collaborating with Elsevier, the giant Amsterdam-based science publisher, and its underlying data come from Scopus, a subscription abstracts database created by Elsevier in 2004.
The SCImago Journal & Country Rank database was launched in December by SCImago, a data-mining and visualization group at the universities of Granada, Extremadura, Carlos III and Alcalá de Henares, all in Spain....
The new rankings are welcomed by Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington in Seattle, who works on a similar citation index, the Eigenfactor, using Thomson data. “It's yet one more confirmation of the importance and timeliness of a new generation of journal ranking systems to take us beyond the impact factor,” says Bergstrom....
Thomson is also under fire from researchers who want greater transparency over how citation metrics are calculated and the data sets used. In a hard-hitting editorial published in Journal of Cell Biology in December, Mike Rossner, head of Rockefeller University Press, and colleagues say their analyses of databases supplied by Thomson yielded different values for metrics from those published by the company (M. Rossner et al . J. Cell Biol. 179, 1091–1092 ; 2007).
Moreover, Thomson, they claim, was unable to supply data to support its published impact factors. “Just as scientists would not accept the findings in a scientific paper without seeing the primary data,” states the editorial, “so should they not rely on Thomson Scientific's impact factor, which is based on hidden data.”
Citation metrics produced by both academics and companies are often challenged, says Pringle. The editorial, he claims, “misunderstands much, and misstates several matters”, including the authors' exchanges with Thomson on the affair. On 1 January, the company launched a web forum to formally respond to the editorial.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/02/2008 07:52:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
