The more we publish, the less they cite us
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25260/EA.17.27.3.0.453Abstract
There is a concern that the pressure to increase the number of papers in high impact factor journals could be detrimental to the quality of research, and therefore, to the impact that it might have in the international scientific community. In this work, we have done a scientometric and statistical analysis of published articles by Argentine, Brazilian, Chilean, and Mexican ecologists from 1975 to 2015, to test this hypothesis. H-index values (which measures an article’s number of citations and total items published) were recorded in the top 10 journals for each country. While the number of publications grew exponentially in these four countries since 2000, we observed that the number of citations decreased markedly, which is to say that promoting scientific productivity by stimulating an increase in the number of publications in high impact factor journals, the dominant scientific policy in many Latin American countries, does not necessarily reflect greater insertion into the international scientific debate, but rather the current scientific policies have produced the opposite outcome. Publishing fewer papers, but with greater quality and depth, or perhaps dedicating ourselves to strengthening scientific and technological systems that are linked with local and regional needs (and evaluated accordingly), could be an alternative, but wiser, path to build a regional ecology with greater global impact, relevance, pertinence and visibility.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25260/EA.17.27.3.0.453
References
Anderson, C. B., A. Monjeau, and J. R. Rau. 2015a. Knowledge dialogue to attain global scientific excellence and broader social relevance. BioScience 65:709-717.
Anderson, C. B., J. C. Pizarro, R. Estevez, A. Sapoznikow, A. Pauchard, O. Barbosa, A. Moreira-Muñoz, and A. E. J. Valenzuela. 2015b. ¿Estamos avanzando hacía una socio-ecología? Reflexiones sobre la integración de las dimensiones “humanas” en la ecología en el sur de América. Ecología Austral 25:263-272.
Bohannon, J. 2016. Hate journal impact factors? New study gives you one more reason. Science Doi: 1126/science/aag0643.
Bordieu, P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA, USA.
Bornmann, L., and H-D. Daniel. 2005. Does the h-index for ranking of scientist really work? Scientometrics 65:391-392.
Braun T., W. Glänzel, and A. Schubert. 2005. A Hirsch-type index for journals. The Scientist 19:8.
Di Bitetti, J., and A. Ferreras. 2017. Publish (in English) or perish: The effect on citation rate of using languages other than English in scientific publications. Ambio 46(1): 121-127.
Farji-Brenner, A. 2012. El valor de tener muchas citas. Ecología Austral 22:215-220.
Fischer, J., E. G. Ritchie, and J. Hanspach. 2012. Academia’s obsession with quantity. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 27:473-474.
García Curilaf, C. I., and G. M. Denegri. 2016. Supuestos epistemológicos y ontológicos presentes en la historia de la ecología. Ecología Austral 26:221-228.
Graham, M. H., and P. K. Dayton. 2002. On the evolution of ecological ideas: Paradigms and scietific progress. Ecology 83:1481-1489.
Grigston, J., and B. Mudrak. 2016. The State of Authorship. Maximizing Impact with the Time and Money You Spend. American Journal Experts. Durham, N.C. Pp. 11.
Hirsch, J. E. 2005. An index to quantify individual´s scientific research output. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences USA 102:16569-16572.
Holbrook, J. B. 2012. Re-assessing the science-society relation: The case of the US National Science Foundation's broader impacts merit review criterion (1997-2011). Pp. 328-362 in R. Frodeman, J. B. Holbrook and H. Xiaonan (eds.). Peer Review, Research Integrity, and the Governance of Science - Practice, Theory, and Current Discussions. People's Publishing House. Beijing, China.
Jaksic, F. M. 1994. Artículos clásicos, modas e impacto en Ecología: los ecólogos chilenos en el contexto internacional, regional y local. Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 67:245-251.
Krauskopff, M. 1994. Epistemometria, a term contributing to express the meaning and potential methodologies of scientometrics in Spanish speaking countries. Scientometrics 30:425-428.
Leimu, R., and J. Koricheva. 2004. What determines the citation frequency of ecological papers? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20:28.32.
Meneghini, R., A. L. Packer, and L. Nassi-Calὸ. 2008. Articles by Latin American authors in prestigious journals have fewer citations. PLoS ONE 3(11):e3804.
Max-Neef, M. 1995. Economic growth and quality of life: a threshold hypothesis. Ecological Economics 15:115-118.
McVeigh. 2004. Open Access Journals in the ISI Citation Databases: Analysis of Impact Factors and Citation Patterns. A citation study from Thomson Scientific. Thomson Corporation. URL: http://ip science.thomsonreuters.com/m/pdfs/openaccesscitations2.pdf.
Monjeau, A., J. R. Rau, and C. B. Anderson. 2013. Regional science: Latin America should ditch Impact Factor. Nature 499:29.
Monjeau, A., J. R. Rau, and C. B. Anderson. 2015. El síndrome del factor de impacto y la ética ambiental en América Latina: ¿ha llegado el tiempo de la insurrección? Cuadernos de Ética. Edición especial: Ética Ambiental Latinoamericana: Contextos, Enfoques, Desafíos 30:1-23.
Pasterkamp, P., J. Rotmans, D. Kleijn, and C. Bors. 2007. Citation frequency: a biased measure of research impact significantly influenced by the geographical origin of research articles. Scientometrics 70:153-165.
R Development Core Team. 2015. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria.
Rau, J. R. 1997. Factores de impacto de la Revista Chilena de Historia Natural: 1991-1995. Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 70:453-457.
Rau, J. R. 2007. Índice h (2000-2004) de los científicos ambientales más citados que residen en Chile. Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 80:381-383.
Sarewitz, D. 2016. The pressure to publish pushes down quality. Nature 533:147.
SCImago. 2015. Principales indicadores cienciométricos de la actividad científica chilena. Informe 2015. Programa de Información Científica, CONICYT. Santiago, Chile.
Taylor, C. 1997. Seguir una regla. Pp. 221-238 in Argumentos filosóficos, ensayos sobre el conocimiento, el lenguaje y la modernidad. Paidós, Barcelona, España.
Van Rann, A. F. J. 2004. Sleeping beauties in science. Scientometrics 59(3):461-466.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2017 Jaime R. Rau, Adrian Monjeau, Jose C. Pizarro, Christopher B. Anderson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Authors retain their rights as follows: 1) by granting the journal the right to its first publication, and 2) by registering the published article with a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which allows authors and third parties to view and use it as long as they clearly mention its origin (citation or reference, including authorship and first publication in this journal). Authors can make other non-exclusive distribution agreements as long as they clearly indicate their origin and are encouraged to widely share and disseminate the published version of their work.
