The Nature research journals intend to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, also known as DORA, this week. The Nature journals (Nature-branded journals, Scientific Reports, Scientific Data, and Nature Partner Journals) have editorially aligned with the principles outlined in the DORA Declaration, particularly the need to eliminate inappropriate use of journal impact factors. (A set of related edits is available on our journal metrics page.)
The Problem with Journal Impact Factor
Since 2005, Nature has expressed concern about the inappropriate reliance on journal impact factor when evaluating individual scientists by their institutions and funders. The skewed distribution of journal citation statistics (due to some highly cited papers) undermines any fundamental utility of impact factor, and it is quite clear that believing a researcher’s strength can be measured by such a statistic is silly. The misconception also persists that citation counts are the only measure of a paper’s scientific value.
Improving Information Available to Researchers
We have studied researchers’ opinions on metrics over recent months and what matters to them when choosing where to publish their work. In the second half of 2016, we conducted a survey of authors.
About 985 authors from Nature Research and over 2500 from Springer Nature overall, who published a research article during 2015-2016, shared their views, with the largest groups of respondents from Europe (47%), Asia and the Middle East (19%), and the United States (15%).
The survey showed a demand for more information about journals from publishers: 85% of authors said information about journal performance is important to them when deciding where to publish their work, but 48% felt that publishers do not provide enough. This information is particularly important for early-career researchers with less publishing experience.
Improving the Journal Metrics Page
Accordingly, we have made an effort to provide more accessible information about what different metrics mean and about aspects of the peer review process that researchers care about. This is especially important since we employ around 300 dedicated professional editors to deliver effective and robust peer review.
As such, we have improved the Nature Research metrics page to provide additional information on average times for all stages of the workflow from submission to publication. We have also created a new infographic containing short, simple explanations for each of the metrics we now provide, which we have published under a CCBY license so that anyone can use it anywhere.
For more information, you can visit the related links below.
Leave a Reply