Quantity versus Quality

of Research Publications

Prof. V. Murugesan
Director, Centre for Research
Anna University
Chennai
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 Publish or Perish

Publish,Patent and Prosper

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Communication platforms of
Scientists and Engineers
 Journals
 Conferences, seminars & workshops
 Books
 Patents

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What is a journal?
A periodical publication intended to
further the progress of science and
technology by reporting new research

Publication of the results - an

essential part of research

Journal article - a permanent scientific

record
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5
Types of journal articles

 Communications and Letters

 Research notes
 Articles
 Review articles

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 Communications and Letters
- short description of results
- important current original research
findings requiring urgent publication
 Research notes
- short description of results
- current original research findings - less
important than communications
and letters

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 Articles
- a detailed description of results
- current original research finding
 Review articles
- do not cover original research
- accumulate the results of different
articles on a particular topic
- a coherent narrative about the state of
the art in the particular field

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Peer reviewed journal and quality
A journal is accepted as a qualitative and
standard journal, only when it is peer
reviewed (if possible by international peers)
Has international editorial board and has
international authorship
Only less than 10% journals published from
India are standard and quality journals*

* A study commissioned by DST, New Delhi;

Source: www.jntu.ac.in/notif_01_06/Feb/Enggrevjo.doc

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What is peer reviewing?
 Peerreview (also known as refereeing) is
the process of subjecting an author's
research work, to the scrutiny of others who
are experts in the same field

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Peer reviewing process
The quality of the paper required to be
published in a journal is decided by the
editors and reviewers Publisher of the journal

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Reviewer 1 Reviewer 2 Reviewer 3
Note: Number of reviewers depends on journal’s policy
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Conference proceedings Vs
Journals
Conference proceedings – collection of
papers presented in a conference

Generally papers are not peer reviewed –

can not be equaled to journal

Some times only the abstracts are reviewed

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Conference proceedings Vs
journals…
Exceptions apply – some
conference proceedings are
peer reviewed

Example:
- Studies in Surface Science
and Catalysis
- IEEE conference
proceedings

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How to weigh merit of a
published paper?
Merit of a diamond
- cut, colour, weight & clarity

Merit of a published paper

- citation

Paper 2
Paper 1

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What is citation?
A reference to a published or unpublished
source
Prime purpose of a citation - intellectual
honesty
-to attribute to other authors the ideas they
have previously expressed
- to tell the work's readers that the work's
authors are not the original wellsprings of
those ideas

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“The more the citations you get
the more popular your research
work”

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Major citation indexing services
ISI - Institute for Scientific Information (part
of Thomson Scientific), -publishes the ISI
citation indexes (Journal Citation Index)
- Science Citation Index (SCI)
- Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)
- Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

Elsevier publishes Scopus - available online

- combines subject searching with citation
browsing

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Citation history for Prof. Murugesan, V
Based on Scopus documents published after 1995 – total 135 documents
Self citations of the authors were excluded

Total number of citations

2154

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Title : Solar photocatalytic degradation of
azo dye: Comparison of
photocatalytic efficiency of ZnO and

TiO2
Authors : Sakthivel S., Neppolian B.,
Shankar M.V., Arabindoo B.,
Palanichamy M., Murugesan V.

Journal : Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

77 (2003) 65-82

was cited 165 times!

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Citation history for Prof. Abdullah Khan, M
Based on Scopus documents published after 1995 – total 12 documents
Self citations of the authors were excluded

Total number of citations

384

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Title :A new optimal reactive power scheduling
method for loss minimization and voltage
stability margin maximization using
successive multi-objective fuzzy LP technique

Authors :Venkatesh, B., Sadasivam, G.,

Abdullah Khan, M.
Journal :IEEE Transactions on Power Systems
15 (2000) 844-851

was cited 108 times!

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Other indexing services
 CiteSeerX - primarily covers the fields

of computer and information science

 RePec - covers economics
 Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic
Search, ArnetMiner - cover all
academic subjects

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Tools to weigh the merit of a
journal, published paper and
author
Citation metrics
 Impact factor
 H – index
 SJR & SNIP
Paper 2
Paper 1

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Impact factor (IF)
 Invented by Eugene Garfield, founder of the
Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now part of
Thomson Reuters

 A proxy for the relative importance of a journal

within its field

 Journalswith higher IF deemed to be more

important than those with lower ones

 IFs
are calculated yearly for journals indexed in
Thomson Reuter's Journal Citation Index

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How IF is calculated?
 If, A= the number of times articles published in a
journal in 2008 and 2009 were cited by other
indexed journals during 2010
&
B = the total number of "citable items" published by
the journal in 2008 and 2009.
("Citable items" - articles, reviews, proceedings, or
notes; not editorials or Letters-to-the-Editor.)

2010 impact factor of the journal = A/B

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Chemical Sciences

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Chemical Engineering

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Civil Engineering

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Computer Science

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Electrical & Electronic Eng.

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Mechanical Engineering

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Biological Sciences 2006 JCR Science Edition

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Shortcoming of IF
 IF is highly discipline-dependent

 The impact factor refers to the average number of

citations per paper-not a normal distribution - not a
valid representation - unfit for citation evaluation

 Self-citation
can influence IF - “impact” of the work
among other investigators can not be known

 Journals can manipulate the number and type of

articles and increase their IF artificially

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 SNIP & SJR:
New Perspectives of Journal metrics
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR):
The power of prestige
Developed by Professor Felix de Moya,
A prestige metric based on the idea that ‘all
citations are not created equal’.
The subject field, quality and reputation of the
journal has a direct impact on the value of a
citation.
Citation from a source with a relatively high SJR is
worth more than a citation from a source with a
lower SJR
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Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP)

Created by Professor Henk Moed at CTWS,

University of Leiden.
Measures contextual citation impact by
weighing citations based on the total number
of citations in a given subject field.

About SNIP
— Takes a research field’s citation frequency into account
— Considers immediacy - how quickly a paper is likely to have an impact in a given field
— Accounts for how well the field is covered by the underlying database
— Calculates without use of a journal’s subject classification to avoid delimitation
— Counters any potential for editorial manipulation

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 Difference between Impact Factor (IF) and
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR):
Characteristics Impact Factor (IF) SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
Definition Impact Factor is one of the quantitative SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is a prestige
tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing metric based on the idea that ‘all
and comparing journals.  It is a measure citations are not created equal’. With
of the frequency with which the "average SJR, the subject field, quality and
article" in a journal has been cited in a reputation of the journal has a direct
particular year or period. effect on the value of a citation.
Calculation A= total cites in 1992  -
B= 1992 cites to articles published in
1990-91 (this is a subset of A)
C= number of articles published in 1990-
91,D= B/C = 1992 impact factor
Organization
Thomson Reuters SCImago Research Group
Source Database Institute for Scientific
Information (ISI), Web of Scopus (Elsevier B.V.)
Science
Number of Journals
8297 17159
Languages 30 50
Countries of Research Not available 229
Origin
Reference Period 1 Calendar year 3 Calendar year
Citation window 2 preceding years 3 past years
Secondary indices, utilities Journal immediacy index, journal cited H-index, self-cites, country
half-life, unified impact factor, 5 years
impact factor, self-cites, graphical indicators, graphical representations
representations 38
H-index (also called Hirsch index)
Measures both the scientific productivity
and the apparent scientific impact of a
scientist

Invented by Jorge E. Hirsch, a physicist at

the University of California San Diego

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H-index
Itis a distribution of citations received by a
given researcher's publications

“a scholar with an index of h has

published ‘h’ papers each of which has
been cited by others at least h times”

- the h-index reflects both the number of

publications and the number of citations
per publication

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H-index
H –index an alternative to journal impact
factor - evaluation of the impact of the work
of a particular researcher

only the most highly cited articles contribute

to the h-index

itsdetermination is a relatively simpler

process

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How to calculate H-index?
One can use
 free internet data base
– Google Scholar
 subscription based data base
– Web of knowledge
- Scopus

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H- graph

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H – graph for Prof. Murugesan, V

H- index = 24

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H – graph for Prof. Abdullah Khan, M

H- index = 8

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Shortcoming of H-index
the main problem – only the most highly
cited articles contribute
For example:
A scientist publishes 20 papers each cited
twenty times – H-index = 20
Another scientist publishes 40 papers, with
twenty papers cited twenty times each and
the rest of the 19 papers cited 19 times
each – his H-index also = 20
- later is clearly better than former
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Where citation metrics may be
used?
While evaluating scientists and engineers
for
- promotion
- awards
- employment
- sanctioning of projects

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Professor ‘A’ Published 32 papers

10 x 0.3 + 15 x 0.8 + 7 x 0
Impact Factor of ‘A’ = _______________________________
32
= 15/32
= 0.5

Professor ‘B’ Published 15 papers

6 x 1.8 + 3 x 2.5 + 6 x 0.5

Impact Factor of ‘B’ = _______________________________
15

= 10.8+7.5+3.0/15
= 1.4
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Summary
If you wish to publish good research paper

- Publish in journals
- Prefer to publish in journals with high
impact factor
- Publish your own ideas in clear
manner so that others follow those
ideas – if so you will get more
citations

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