Impact of the E-Journals of Academic Libraries Consortium on Research Productivity: An Iranian Consortium Experience

Abstract

This article reports on a research project undertaken at a university in Iran to study the impact of academic libraries consortium on research productivity. The overall objective of study was to examine to what extent the subscribed resources meet the needs of users and to determine the quality of cited journals by researchers. It also examined the relationship between the access method to a cited journal, its quality and the average citing to it. The results of the present research can help decision makers for selecting and providing suitable resources and databases based on the users' needs.     

Collection Management Strategies in a Digital Environment

Abstract

This paper describes a grant-funded research project to relocate selected print journal runs, for which an electronic version is available, to remote storage from the shelves of campus libraries at the University of California. During the project, users will rely on the electronic version of selected journals. Data, including costs associated with the project, usage of print journals, usage of electronic journals, as well as user behavior and attitudes, will be gathered and used to develop long-range strategies and institutional policies.     

A longitudinal investigation into the changing citing behavior of geomatics postgraduate students at Wuhan University,China, 1988–2004: Implications for collection development

Aim:The purpose of this study is to identify and describe the citing behavior of geomatics postgraduate students at the Wuhan University in China. These students constitute one of the main user groups of Wuhan University Library and the analysis of their use of literature (through the means of citation analysis) can yield valuable insights against which to benchmark and inform collection development policy and other services at the Information Technology Library (ITL) at Wuhan University.Design/methodology/approach:In this project, 9317 citations in 21 PhD and 180 MSc theses submitted at the Wuhan University in the years of 1988, 1996, and 2004 were analyzed. All cited materials were divided by output format (monographs, proceedings, journal articles) and the more in-depth analysis was conducted for all cited journals. The following characteristics of the cited journal literature were analyzed: subject, age, language, and dispersion of journal titles.Findings:An increased use of journal literature in bibliographies of geomatics theses was observed over time. A trend to increase citations to international conference proceedings was also noted as well as a trend to cite more journals in disciplines other than surveying and mapping. It was also noted that, over time, citations to documents in languages other than Chinese and English have significantly decreased (in some cases, disappeared). Large dispersion among the most frequently cited journals in different time periods (only 25% of titles were repeated in 1988, 1996, and 2004 top ranking journal lists) was also noted. It was also noted that the core of geomatics literature is expanding (it now takes 42% of journal titles to cover 80% of all citations).Practical implications:By analyzing citation patterns of the graduate students of geomatics in China, we can track the developments and changes within that discipline in China and can compare these trends internationally (e.g. increased role of a journal, the importance of conference proceedings, domination of the English-language sources, dispersion of journal literature, and increasing multidisciplinarity of the discipline). The techniques and methods used in this study can be replicated to study other disciplines. Also, it is hoped that the findings of this research will inform collection development planning, development of reference services, and information literacy training.     

Philosophy Dissertation Bibliographies and Citations in Serials Evaluation

Serial and journal collections can be effectively evaluated through citation studies of dissertation bibliographies. The entire run of philosophy dissertations accepted at Purdue University from 1970-1988 was examined for serials and journals listed in their bibliographies. A composite profile of bibliographic support for serials and journals in dissertation research in philosophy at Purdue University was checked against the serial and journal Holdings. This simple procedure is both effective and easily performed for any research collection in the humanities. Both librarian and subject scholar can benefit in implementing this procedure in collection evaluation.     

Why do authors publish in predatory journals?

This study examines the reasons why authors publish in ‘predatory’ OA journals. In total, 50 journals were randomly selected from Beall's list of ‘predatory’ journals. Different methods, including WHOIS tracking, were utilized to query basic information about the selected journals, including location and registrant. Then, 300 articles were randomly selected from within selected journals in various scientific fields. Authors of the selected articles were contacted and sent survey questions to complete. A grounded theory qualitative methods approach was used for data collection and analysis. The results demonstrated that most of these journals were located in the developing world, usually Asia or Africa, even when they claimed they were in the USA or UK. Furthermore, four themes emerged after authors’ survey responses were coded, categorized, and sub‐categorized. The themes were: social identity threat, unawareness, high pressure, and lack of research proficiency. Scholars in the developing world felt that reputable Western journals might be prejudiced against them and sometimes felt more comfortable publishing in journals from the developing world. Other scholars were unaware of the reputation of the journals in which they published and would not have selected them had they known. However, some scholars said they would still have published in the same journals if their institution recognised them. The pressure to ‘publish or perish’ was another factor influencing many scholars’ decisions to publish in these fast‐turnaround journals. In some cases, researchers did not have adequate guidance and felt they lacked the knowledge of research to submit to a more reputable journal. More needs to be done by institutions and reputable journals to make researchers aware of the problem of ‘predatory’ journals.     

Improving standards in the scientific biomedical community in Romania by using journal ranking to improve journal quality*

The paper articulates the problems of journal publication in a relatively small country such as Romania where locally (i.e. nationally) published journals include most of the national medical scientific output. The starting point was a study ordered by the Cluj University of Medicine and Pharmacy Scientific Council, for the purpose of obtaining an objectively ranked list of all current Romanian biomedical journals that could be used in the evaluation of the scientific activity of the university academic staff. Sixty‐five current biomedical journals were identified—of which more than half were new titles that had appeared over the past 5 years. None of these are included in the Science Citation Index or Journal Citation Reports (JCR). A set of criteria was used for ranking the journals: peer review, inclusion in international databases, publication time lag, language of articles and abstracts, journal specific index and domestic impact factor. The period covered, along with tools and formulas used are presented. The problems of Romanian biomedical journals as well as ways of improving publishing standards are discussed. Also emphasized is the necessity for increased awareness in the medical scholarly community and the role of the library in this respect.     

The resilience of scientific publication: From elite ancient academies to open access

• Scientific publication has been a key part of the scientific method since the inception of Philosophical Transactions in 1665.
• The scientific publications industry has grown exponentially along with science, incorporating technological innovations along the way, and adapting journal processes and practices to changing needs of science as it matured.
• Of all the technological innovations over more than 300 years, the move to online journals may be the most significant, making open access to content practical for the first time.
• The open‐access movement is disrupting the economics of journal publishing, which is hoped will make the industry more competitive: the ability of the publications industry to adapt to open access will be a measure of its resilience.
• The demand for articles published in reputable journals continues to grow as readers trust the credibility of peer reviewed journal articles, and good authors value the prestige of publishing in the best journals.
• It is difficult to predict what new functionalities may be included in articles of the future or what additional services publishers and editors will provide, but there is every reason to believe that scientific journal articles are here to stay.

     

Editorial policy and the assessment of quality among medical journals

Many factors are weighed in judging the quality of a journal. Editorial policies in the instructions to authors section offer an important, though often neglected, source of information. In addition to directions on formatting and style, this section often includes financial disclosures and policies on coverage, peer review, confidentiality, human experimentation and duplicate submissions. This study analyzes the contents of instructions sections from several categories of medical journals to determine their usefulness in making collection development decisions. Included are journals currently considered the most prestigious, indexed in Index Medicus and Abridged Index Medicus, and not indexed in Index Medicus or subscribed to by a typical large academic health sciences library. It was found that in a statistically significant number of journals, the instructions to authors section is more likely to be included and substantive in highly regarded journals than in less prestigious journals. It is concluded that the amount of information in the instructions section is related to the quality of the journal and that these sections are a useful collection development tool.     

Mapping the literature of health care management: an update

Objective:This study aims to identify the core journals cited in the health care management literature and to determine their coverage in the foremost bibliographic databases used by the discipline.Methods:Using the methodology outlined by the Medical Library Association''s Nursing and Allied Health Resource Section (NAHRS) protocol for “Mapping the Literature of Nursing and Allied Health Professions,” this study updates an earlier study published in 2007. Cited references from articles published in a three-year range (2016–2018) were collected from five health care management journals. Using Bradford''s Law of Scattering, cited journal titles were tabulated and ranked according to the number of times cited. Eleven databases were used to determine coverage of the most highly cited journal titles for all source journals, as well as for a subset of practitioner-oriented journals.Results:The most highly cited sources were journals, followed by government documents, Internet resources, books, and miscellaneous resources. The databases with the most complete coverage of Zone 1 and 2 were Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and PubMed, while the worst performing databases were Health Business Elite, ABI/Inform, and Business Source Complete.Conclusions:The literature of health care management has expanded rapidly in the last decade, with cumulative citations increasing by 76.6% and the number of cited journal titles increasing by nearly 70% since the original study. Coverage of the core journals in popular databases remains high, although specialized health care management and business databases did not perform as well as general or biomedical databases.     

Technology and Quality in Educational Scholarly Communication

ABSTRACT

The move to electronic forms of communication has changed the way educational research is communicated. In particular, it has led to an increased reliance on journals. This change has been more precipitous than one might expect. As journals become a larger proportion of the body of current scholarship, authors and readers seek new methods of determining and communicating journal quality. Methods that have worked for researchers in the sciences are not directly transferable to the education discipline. This paper examines existing tools and looks for new methods of assessing quality in journal publishing. This article was developed from a paper presented at the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE) conference in Spring 2007.     

Annals of Library and Information Studies: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Journal and a Comparison with the Top Library and Information Studies Journals in Asia and Worldwide (2011–2017)

ABSTRACT

This article presents a thorough bibliometric analysis of research published in Annals of Library and Information Studies (ALIS), an India-based journal, for the period 2011–2017. Specifically, it compares this journal’s trends with those of other library and information science (LIS) journals from the same geographical area (India, and Asia as a whole) and with the 10 highest-rated LIS journals worldwide. The source of the data used was the multidisciplinary database Scopus. To perform this comparison, ALIS’ production was analyzed in order to identify authorship patterns; for example, authors’ countries of residence, co-authorship trends, and collaboration networks. Research topics were identified through keyword analysis, while performance was measured by examining the number of citations articles received. This study provides substantial information. The research lines detected through examining the keywords in ALIS articles were determined to be similar to those for the top LIS journals in both Asia and worldwide. Specifically, ALIS authors are focusing on metrics, bibliometrics, and social networking, which follows global trends. Notably, however, collaboration among Asia-based journals was found to be lower than that in the top-indexed journals in the LIS field, showing lesser internationalization. The results obtained present a roadmap for expanding the research in this field.     

The ethical issues in instructions for authors of Chinese biomedical journals

229 Chinese‐language biomedical journals from A Guide to The Core Journals of China were investigated for their guidance on 14 ethical issues. The issues of authorship, duplicate submission, privacy and confidentiality, and integrity of the data were mentioned in more than 50% of the journals. Except for the issues of authorship and protection of animals in research, significant differences were found between Chinese Medical Association Publishing House (CMAPH) journals (n = 67) and non‐CMAPH journals (n = 162) (P < 0.05). 66 of the 229 journals did not update their instructions for authors regularly. 196 journal instructions listed authorship criteria, while the other 33 did not. Clinical trial registration policy was required by 26 (11.3%) journals, among which the CONSORT statement for randomized trials was required by 23, and only one journal guided the authors to work in line with the EQUATOR Network. The study concludes that the situation of publishing ethics in the instructions for authors of Chinese biomedical journals is not favorable, and that Chinese biomedical editors should learn more about publishing ethics in order to reduce opportunities for publication problems.     

Cataloging & Classification Quarterly

Abstract

The World Wide Web site tor Cataloging & Classification Quarterly(CCQ) was created to address a serious need-timeli-ness-in communicating the results of research among librarians, while at the same time providing a number of new benefits to enhance the journal's relationship to its readers. Brought online in early 1995, it was the first such Web site for a professional journal in librarianship, and its characteristic method of making abstracts available well in advance of the print version anticipated a practice later employed by journals in a variety of other fields. Historical background to electronic texts is discussed in context with the beginnings of the CCQ Web page, along with providing an orientation to the relevant aspects of the still-evolving World Wide Web. By using the CCQ Web page as an example, an attempt to characterize the current state of electronic journal publishing will be outlined. With the decision early this year by CCQ's publisher, The Haworth Press, Inc., to begin a pilot program of publishing a select number of its some 160 journals via the World Wide Web, the CCQ Web site can be regarded as an influential forerunner for the publisher's development of electronic journals.     

Coverage and citation impact of oncological journals in the Web of Science and Scopus

This paper reviews a number of studies comparing Thomson Scientific’s Web of Science (WoS) and Elsevier’s Scopus. It collates their journal coverage in an important medical subfield: oncology. It is found that all WoS-covered oncological journals (n = 126) are indexed in Scopus, but that Scopus covers many more journals (an additional n = 106). However, the latter group tends to have much lower impact factors than WoS covered journals. Among the top 25% of sources with the highest impact factors in Scopus, 94% is indexed in the WoS, and for the bottom 25% only 6%. In short, in oncology the WoS is a genuine subset of Scopus, and tends to cover the best journals from it in terms of citation impact per paper. Although Scopus covers 90% more oncological journals compared to WoS, the average Scopus-based impact factor for journals indexed by both databases is only 2.6% higher than that based on WoS data. Results reflect fundamental differences in coverage policies: the WoS based on Eugene Garfield’s concepts of covering a selective set of most frequently used (cited) journals; Scopus with broad coverage, more similar to large disciplinary literature databases. The paper also found that ‘classical’, WoS-based impact factors strongly correlate with a new, Scopus-based metric, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), one of a series of new indicators founded on earlier work by Pinski and Narin [Pinski, G., & Narin F. (1976). Citation influence for journal aggregates of scientific publications: Theory, with application to the literature of physics. Information Processing and Management, 12, 297–312] that weight citations according to the prestige of the citing journal (Spearman’s rho = 0.93). Four lines of future research are proposed.     

Journals in the Core Collection

ABSTRACT

This overview of the core concept applied to journals defines the relevant terminology and cites specific examples of core lists. Ten approaches for determining core journals (subjective judgment, use, indexing coverage, overlapping library holdings, citation data, citation network/co-citation analysis, production of articles, Bradford's Law, faculty publication data, and multiple criteria methods) are reviewed and the practical applications of core journals lists are explained. Theoretical and practical problems associated with the core concept and core journal lists are discussed and a taxonomy for classifying core journal lists is outlined.     

Some comments on the journal weighted impact factor proposed by Habibzadeh and Yadollahie

In a recent paper in the Journal of Informetrics, Habibzadeh and Yadollahie [Habibzadeh, F., & Yadollahie, M. (2008). Journal weighted impact factor: A proposal. Journal of Informetrics, 2(2), 164–172] propose a journal weighted impact factor (WIF). Unlike the ordinary impact factor, the WIF of a journal takes into account the prestige or the influence of citing journals. In this communication, we show that the way in which Habibzadeh and Yadollahie calculate the WIF of a journal has some serious problems. Due to these problems, a ranking of journals based on WIF can be misleading. We also indicate how the problems can be solved by changing the way in which the WIF of a journal is calculated.     

Scientists and the Journal Article: Choices for Access

ABSTRACT

Researchers must choose between many sources when obtaining journal articles. University of Toledo faculty and graduate students in the sciences, pharmacy, and engineering were surveyed to ascertain their preferences in journal article formats and features, and their awareness, frequency of use, and preference ranking of four services: traditional interlibrary loan, electronic journals, and faxes from either a storage depository or the UnCover document delivery service. Speed and print quality topped the desired features; faxing was the least desirable format. Electronic journals and interlibrary loan were the most used services, though there are indications that interlibrary loan is used reluctantly.     

How Much of Library and Information Science Literature Qualifies as Research?

There is an extensive amount of Library and Information Science (LIS) writing produced each year. While there is general awareness regarding the variety of journal literature, there is no certainty on the percentage of the collection that we can call research. This project is an important first step in answering the question. A content analysis of the LIS academic/scholarly journals at the Simmons College Library was conducted. The research level collection of LIS literature makes the library an ideal candidate for this study. The latest issue of each journal subscribed to for fiscal year 2012–2013 containing academic/scholarly content was analyzed. Each article was analyzed to determine: 1) if it was research or non-research, 2) the method used to collect data for the study in the article, and 3) the subject terms or keywords associated with the article. 105 journal titles were identified out of 177 periodicals. In the 1880 articles analyzed from these, 16% qualified as research. Surveys were found to be the most popular research method used. This study will benefit students, faculty, and staff with research requirements as well as librarians who guide patrons through a search for research literature.