DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics

 Unit V: Data Bases and Research Metrics Open Access

publication and Initiatives – Indexing databases – Citation
databases, Web of Science, Scopus, etc. – Impact factor of
journals as per Journal Citation report .SNIP, SJR, IPP, Cite
Score - Metrics: h-index,gindex,i10index,altmetrics –
Conflict of interest.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• What are research metrics?
• Research metrics are quantitative tools used to help assess the quality
and impact of research outputs.
• Metrics are available for use at the journal, article, and even
researcher level.
• However, any one metric only tells a part of the story and each metric
also has its limitations.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Therefore, a single metric should never be considered in isolation.
• For a long time, the only tool for assessing journal performance was
the Impact Factor – more on that in a moment.
• Now there are a range of different research metrics available, from
the Impact Factor to altmetrics, h-index, and more.
• But what do they all mean? How is each metric calculated? Which
research metrics are the most relevant to your journal? And how can
you use these tools to monitor your journal’s performance?
• Keep reading for a more in-depth look at the
Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan – range of different

metrics available. Addl. Dean (Research)

DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Using metrics to promote your journal
• Journal metrics can be a useful tool for researchers when they’re
choosing where to submit their research.
• You may therefore be asked by prospective authors about your
journal’s metrics.
• You might also want to highlight certain metrics when you’re talking
about the journal, to illustrate its reach or impact.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Using metrics to promote your journal
• If you do, we advise that you always quote at least two different
metrics, to give researchers a richer view of journal performance.
• Please also accompany this quantitative data with qualitative
information that will help researchers assess the suitability of the
journal for their research, such as its aims & scope.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Citation-based Metrics
• IMPACT FACTOR
• What is the Impact Factor?
• The Impact Factor is probably the most well-known metric for
assessing journal performance.
• Designed to help librarians with collection management in the 1960s,
it has since become a common proxy for journal quality.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• The Impact Factor is a simple research metric: it’s the average number
of citations received by articles in a journal within a two-year window.
• The Web of Science Journal Citation Reports (JCR) publishes the
official results annually, based on this calculation:

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• For example, the 2017 Impact Factors (released in 2018) used the
following calculation:
• Number of citations received in 2017 to content published in Journal
X during 2015 and 2016 divided by
• the total number of articles and reviews published in Journal X in
2015 and 2016.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• For example, the 2017 Impact Factors (released in 2018) used the
following calculation:
• Number of citations received in 2017 to content published in Journal
X during 2015 and 2016, divided by
• the total number of articles and reviews published in Journal X in
2015 and 2016.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• How can I get an Impact Factor for my journal?
• Only journals selected to feature in the Science Citation Index
Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) receive an
official Impact Factor.
• To be eligible for coverage in these Web of Science indices, journals
must meet a wide range of criteria.
• You can find out more about the journal selection process on the
Clarivate website.
Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• For many journals, the first step to receiving an Impact Factor is to
feature in the Emerging - Sources Citation Index (ESCI).

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• What are the disadvantages of the Impact Factor?
• The Impact Factor is an arithmetic mean and doesn’t adjust for the
distribution of citations.
• This means that one highly-cited article can have a major positive
effect on the Impact Factor, skewing the result for the two years.
• Most journals have a highly-skewed citation distribution, with a
handful of highly-cited articles and many low- or zero-cited articles.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• The JCR doesn’t distinguish between citations made to articles,
reviews, or editorials.
• So that the Impact Factor doesn’t penalize journals that publish
rarely-cited content like book reviews, editorials, or news items, these
content types are not counted in the denominator of the calculation
(the total number of publications within the two-year period).
However, citations to this kind of content are still counted.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• This creates two main problems. Firstly, the classification of content is
not subjective, so content such as extended abstracts or author
commentaries fall into an unpredictable gray area.
• Secondly, if such articles are cited, they increase the Impact Factor
without any offset in the denominator of the equation.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• The Impact Factor only considers the number of citations, not the
nature or quality
• You can’t compare Impact Factors like-for-like across different
subject areas.
• Impact Factors can show significant variation year-on-year,
especially in smaller journals.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• CITESCORE
• What is Cite Score?
• Cite Score is the ratio of citations to research published. It’s currently
available for journals and book series which are indexed in Scopus.
Cite Score considers all content published in a journal, not just articles
and reviews.
• Cite Score was produced by Scopus in December 2016 and you can
easily replicate it via the Scopus database. In addition to Cite Score,
Scopus also publish additional rankings, such as the Cite Score
percentile based on subject categories,
Course InstructorL and
Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan
Addl. Dean (Research)
– a monthly Cite Score
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Cite Score Calculations
• Number of all citations recorded in Scopus in one year to content
published in Journal X
• in the last three years, divided by the total number of items published
in Journal X in the previous three years.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• What is a citation database?
• Citation databases are collections of referenced papers/ articles/
books and other material entered into an online system (database) in
a structured and consistent way.
• All the information relating to a single document (author, title,
publication details, abstract, and perhaps the full text) make up the
‘record’ for that document.
•

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Each of these items of information becomes a separate ‘field’ in that
record and enables the document to be retrieved via any of these
items, or by keywords.
• A citation database allows you to access published, peer-reviewed,
high-quality material such as journal articles, research reports,
systematic reviews, conference proceedings, editorials, and related
works.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• When a document is originally entered into a database it is analyzed
for its key subjects, and descriptors (MeSH terms in MEDLINE,
PubMed etc.) are assigned to it.
• MeSH terms are Medical Subject Headings, which is a controlled
vocabulary thesaurus used for indexing and cataloguing articles for
medical and biomedical purposes.
• These MeSH terms allow precise searching as the databases search
for these specific terms in a hierarchical order.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• You can use a citation database to:
• Distinguish between authors with the same name, or an author's
name that has been presented in different ways analyse search results
to show the number of documents broken down by various criteria,
including year, author, source, affiliation, or subject categories search
within results by adding additional terms to the initial search identify
highly cited works related
• to a particular topic find related works that share references or
authors create search alerts to keep up to date with developments in
your discipline set up citation alerts
Course InstructorL to notify
Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan – you when a document or
author is cited elsewhere Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Set up alerts to notify you about new documents by an author
• generate a profile that presents an analysis and citation summary of
works published by an institution or author(s), including h-index
• compare the performance of journals in a particular subject area.
Search a database

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• The Scopus and Web of Science databases share a number of similar
features, but differ in the sources cited and coverage. Both databases
focus on English language publications.
• Scopus
• Coverage
• The Scopus database contains records from 1969 including science,
mathematics, engineering, technology, health and medicine, social
sciences, arts and humanities.
• 22,800 peer reviewed journals, including 3,800 open access titles.
Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

• 280 trade publications. Addl. Dean (Research)

DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Articles in press [accepted for publication] from more than 8,000
publishers.
• 150,000 books from Science, Technology & Medicine (2005-present )
and Arts & Humanities (2003-present).
• 8 million conference papers from 100,000 conferences.
• 39 million patents.
• Guides

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Web of Science (WoS)
• Coverage
• The WoS database contains records from 1900 including sciences,
social sciences, arts and humanities.
• 20,300 peer reviewed journals.
• 94,000 scholarly books (2005-present).
• 10 million conference papers.
• coverage in some fields is less complete than in others, and there is
an apparent focus in theCourse
sciences.
InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Compare citation databases
• Web of Science
• General information ,Multidisciplinary database for
abstracts and citations, the oldest and the most frequently
used Service provider Clarivate Analytics (before Thomson
Reuters and ISI)

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Compare citation databases
• Web of Science
• General information ,Multidisciplinary database for abstracts and
citations, the oldest and the most frequently used Service provider
Clarivate Analytics (before Thomson Reuters and ISI)
• Contains citation data of more than 10 000 of the most cited, peer
reviewed journals. About 8000 journals on natural sciences and
2600 on social sciences. References from the year 1900, citations
from 1997.
Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Compare citation databases
• Google Scholar
• General information
• Search engine, searches for data in scientific sources on the web
• Service provider
• Google
• Access
• Free Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Journal Impact Factor--What is it?
• Journal Impact Factor
• An offshoot of citation analysis is Journal Impact Factor (JIF) which is
used to sort or rank journals by their relative importance. The
underlying assumption behind Impact Factors (IF) is that journals with
high IF publish articles that are cited more often than journals with
lower IF.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Impact factors may be used by:
• Authors to decide where to submit an article for publication.
• Libraries to make collection development decisions
• Academic departments to assess academic productivity
• Academic departments to make decisions on promotion and tenure.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
• Where to find Journal Impact Factors?
• The most notable source for journal impact factors is the annual
publication called the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by
Thomson Scientific.
• How is the Journal Impact Factor Calculated?
• Thomson defines impact factor as, “The journal Impact Factor is the
average number of times articles from the journal published in the
past two years have been cited in the JCR year.
Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics

• The Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in

the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two
previous years.
• An Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published
one or two year ago have been cited one time.
• An Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published
one or two year ago have been cited two and a half times. Citing
articles may be from the same journal; most citing articles are from
different journals.” Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics

• A journal's impact factor for 2008 would be calculated by taking the

number of citations in 2008 to articles that were published in 2007
and 2006 and dividing that number by the total number of articles
published in that same journal in 2007 and 2006.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
 SJR: Scimago Journal Rank

 Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) is a measure of the

prestige of scholarly journals.
 SJR scores are computed using network analysis of
citations received by journals.
 The methodology accounts for number of citations
as well as the source of citations, with citations
from high prestige journals being worth more than
those from journals with lower prestige.
Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
 SJR: Scimago Journal Rank

 The prestige value depends on the field, quality and

reputation of the source journals that citing article
is published in.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
SJR calculation
average # of weighted citations received in a year
÷
# of documents published in previous 3 years

SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper) Calculation

journal’s citation count per paper
÷
citation potential in its subject area

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
 Author impact metrics are indicators used to evaluate the impact of the academic publications of
an author, a lab or an institution.
 They are based on the number of citations and the number of publications.
 The most recognised author metrics is the h-Index.
 G-index and i10-index are alternatives to h-index.
 Please note that many other a uthor metrics exist, but most of them are quite difficult to analyse.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 A conflict of interest occurs when a person's or entity's vested interests raise a question of whether their
actions, judgment, and/or decision-making can be unbiased.
 In research , a conflict of interest arises when a person chooses personal gain over duties to their employer, or
to an organization in which they are a stakeholder, or exploits their position for personal gain in some way.
 Conflicts of interest often have legal ramifications.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
 Unit V:
 Reference:
 https://editorresources.taylorandfrancis.com/understandin
g-research-metrics/#
 https://editorresources.taylorandfrancis.com/wp-content/u
ploads/2018/11/Understanding-research-metrics.pdf

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
 Unit V: Reference:
 https://www.ciap.health.nsw.gov.au/training/ebp-learning-
modules/module3/what-is-a-citation-database.html#:~:text
=A%20citation%20database%20allows%20you,%2C%20edit
orials%2C%20and%20related%20works
.
 https://library.csu.edu.au/search-borrow/find-books-resour
ces/citation-databases
 https://uva.libguides.com/bibliometrics/citation_databases
Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
Unit V: Reference:
• https://libguides.jcu.edu.au/research-indicators/snip-and-s
jr#:~:text=Source-normalized%20Impact%20per%20Paper%
20(SNIP)%20is%20a%20field,receive%20for%20its%20subje
ct%20field
.
• https://www.elsevier.com/authors/tools-and-resources/m
easuring-a-journals-impact
Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
 Unit V: Reference:
• https://libguides.graduateinstitute.ch/metrics/author_imp
act#:~:text=Author%20impact%20metrics%20are%20indica
tors,are%20alternatives%20to%20h-index
.

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
 Unit V: Reference:
• https://libguides.graduateinstitute.ch/metrics/author_imp
act#:~:text=Author%20impact%20metrics%20are%20indica
tors,are%20alternatives%20to%20h-index
.
• https://phdtalks.org/2022/03/explaining-h-index-i10-index-
g-index-other-research-metrics.html
• https://www.researchgate.net/post/
What_is_the_difference_between_H-index_i10-
Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –
Addl. Dean (Research)
DRP 901 - Research and Publication Ethics
 Unit V: Reference:
• https://ethics.ubc.ca/peoplemcdonaldconflict-htm/
• https://www.asha.org/practice/ethics/conflicts-of-professi
onal-interest/
• https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conflict-of-interest
.asp

Course InstructorL Prof.Dr.A.G.Srinivasan –

Addl. Dean (Research)