{"id":1075,"date":"2014-05-28T09:15:46","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T12:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/?p=1075"},"modified":"2016-01-15T17:27:39","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T19:27:39","slug":"what-is-the-decline-of-the-elite-journals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2014\/05\/28\/what-is-the-decline-of-the-elite-journals\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the decline of the elite journals?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Are elite journals declining?<\/i>\u00b9<\/i> is the provocative title of an article which has just been published in the April 2014 edition of the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65 (4) : 649 <\/i>\u2013<\/i> <\/i>655 (JACIST)<\/i>, authored by Vincent Larivi\u00e8re, George A. Lozano and Yves Gingras of the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al in Canada. The article was previously published in open access in arxiv.org, in November 2013.<\/p>\n

Vincent Larivi\u00e8re is a familiar name to readers of the SciELO in Perspective blog for his participation in the SciELO 15 Years Conference where he gave a presentation. An interview\u00b2 with him was also published in the SciELO in Perspective blog in August 2013.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see what Larivi\u00e8re and his colleagues mean by the idea of \u201cdecline of the elite journals\u201d and then we will present some opinions which were heard in the weeks that followed from researchers who discuss matters on the ResearchGate blog.<\/p>\n

Larivi\u00e8re states that traditional elite journals have been growing in importance over the last few decades, and particularly over the last twenty years. For a published article to be located in the select group of the 5% most cited articles, that article must obtain twice the number of citations compared to what was required 40 years previously. But, nevertheless, although since the 1990s the number of articles published in elite journals has grown, those elite journals publish an increasingly smaller percentage of the articles in the select group of 5% mentioned above. This is particularly the case for the journals Nature<\/i> and Science.<\/i><\/p>\n

The emergence of Internet publishing has shifted the emphasis from the academic journal to the individual article and, as a consequence of this, the relationship between the journal impact factor and the citations to works published in the journals has been increasingly weakened over the last 20 years. This fact emerges from an analysis, made by Larivi\u00e8re\u2019s team, of 29 million articles and 800 million citations dating from 1970 to 2012 which were taken from the Web of Science database.<\/p>\n

Amongst the various results obtained from this experiment, one that stands out is that for the seven journals considered \u201celite\u201d (Cell, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, y Science), the proportion of the total of the most cited articles is less than it was 20 years ago even though the journals have increased the total number of articles published. This leads to the conclusion that the most important literature published today is in an increasingly broader array of sources. The digital age has resulted in authors having greater freedom to choose from these other options, making them more independent of the journals in which they normally publish.<\/p>\n

This situation has not escaped the attention of the major publishing groups such as NPG which, instead of trying to expand their elite journals, have begun to create specialized and thematic journals under the same brand.<\/p>\n

The article published in JASIST by Vincent Larivi\u00e8re and his colleagues at the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al presents some interesting points which deserve separate analysis.<\/p>\n

The first, which has been less talked about yet which is nevertheless important from a scientometric point of view, is the \u201csocial promotion\u201d of an article\/author as measured by the number of citations received. This now requires more effort and more time because authors have to accumulate twice the number of citations as was required in previous decades to get into the desired \u201ctop 5%<\/i>\u201d.<\/p>\n

The second point, and one which has produced the most comments and controversies, is about the supposed decline of the international oligopoly which has always managed the so called elite journals.<\/p>\n

The article had already generated some comments\u00b3 when it was published as a pre-print in arXiv.org. But as soon as it was published in JASIST, a debate began in the ResearchGate\u2074 blog which, since the end of March, continued on for several weeks with university researchers participating from various countries, including Russia, Czech Republic, France and the USA. We recommend you look at the debate if you are registered with ResearchGate.<\/p>\n

But more importantly, what is your opinion? Are the elite journals in decline?<\/p>\n

We invite you to share your comments in the Comment section below.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/h3>\n

\u00b9 LARIVI\u00c8RE, V., LOZANO, G.A., and GINGRAS, Y. Are elite journals declining?<\/i> Article first published online: 19 Nov. 2013. Available from: http:\/\/arxiv.org\/ftp\/arxiv\/papers\/1304\/1304.6460.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00b2 Interview with Vincent Larivi<\/i>\u00e8<\/i>re<\/i>. SciELO in Perspective. [viewed 12 May 2014]. Available from: http:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2013\/08\/16\/interview-with-vincent-lariviere\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00b3 Larivi\u00e8re, V. Study reveals declining influence of high impact factor journals<\/i>. Phys.org. 7 November 2012. Available from: http:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2012-11-reveals-declining-high-impact-factor.html<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2074 Question: Do elite research journals get devaluated in the Internet age?<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/post\/Do_elite_research_journals_get_devalued_in_the_Internet_age?pli=1&loginT=gw-UF5Fhp9sOD7TBg7fqjVk37XstnhCmCstJ8mUKKGo*&cp=re221_d1m_p32&ch=reg<\/a><\/p>\n

External link<\/h3>\n

ResearchGate – http:\/\/www.researchgate.net<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ernesto<\/a>About Ernesto Spinak<\/h3>\n

Collaborator on the SciELO program, a Systems Engineer with a Bachelor\u2019s degree in Library Science, and a Diploma of Advanced Studies from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) and a Master\u2019s in \u201cSociedad de la Informaci\u00f3n\u201d (Information Society) from the same university. Currently has a consulting company that provides services in information projects to 14 government institutions and universities in Uruguay.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated from the original in\u00a0Spanish<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Nicholas Cop Consulting<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a study by Vincent Larivi\u00e8re of the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al, there was an exponential increase in the number of articles published in the elite journals. However, it is now required twice the number of citations than in previous decades for an article to be in the top 5% with higher impact, and that these articles are distributed amongst a wider base of titles because authors have more independence in choosing where they publish. …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[29,18,7],"class_list":["post-1075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","tag-bibliometrics","tag-open-access","tag-scholarly-communication"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t