Determining the Quality of Journal Impact Factor Based on Author Metrics
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Abstract
There is a steady rise in both the number of venues and the level of competition. One way to evaluate a journal’s quality is by looking at its impact factor. ”The higher the impact factor, the better the journal is”: This is the belief held by numerous research experts. The truth behind a journal’s impact factor, however, is unknown to them. In order to boost their impact factor, some journals are resorting to unethical practices in order to enhance the number of citations published in their journal. Researchers will thus have a hard time settling on a prestigious journal. The caliber of the research is directly proportional to the journal’s caliber. At present, citations to other papers are used to determine the impact factor. Journal quality is a deciding factor for eminent scholars when publishing an article. Thus far, the paper-to-paper citation network has been the sole determinant of the impact factor. In order to dismantle this type of problem, this article proposes a new impact factor for journals that is based on the authors’ metrics (IFa). Having a renowned researcher on the editorial board raises the bar for the entire journal. Collecting and analyzing all publishing records from 40 journals, 20 of which have high publication rates and 20 of which have low publication rates, this study uses co-author metrics as well as a proposed impact factor based on the author’s H-index and attributions. The impact factor based on the author’s H-index correctly predicts that 70% of venues will see a fluctuation in IF throughout the years, 20% will see a consistent decline, and 10% will see an increase. Compared to the impact factors based on paper citations or author’s citations, the impact factors based on the author’s H-index are superior for journals.
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This Zenodo record is a permanently preserved version of a Structured PREreview. You can view the complete PREreview at https://prereview.org/reviews/21221713.
Does the introduction explain the objective of the research presented in the preprint? Partly The paper addresses a genuine concern; however, the objectives are not explicitly stated, and the readers are left to infer them from the text.Are the methods well-suited for this research? Somewhat appropriate Many unsupported assumptions were made by the authors. There is inconsistency in the number of venues the author stated in the abstract (40 journals) and in the methodology section ( …This Zenodo record is a permanently preserved version of a Structured PREreview. You can view the complete PREreview at https://prereview.org/reviews/21221713.
Does the introduction explain the objective of the research presented in the preprint? Partly The paper addresses a genuine concern; however, the objectives are not explicitly stated, and the readers are left to infer them from the text.Are the methods well-suited for this research? Somewhat appropriate Many unsupported assumptions were made by the authors. There is inconsistency in the number of venues the author stated in the abstract (40 journals) and in the methodology section ( 16). The model used was poorly justified, and there is no theoretical backup to support the model. The model also lacks validation.Are the conclusions supported by the data? Neither supported nor unsupported There's so much generalisation and the results presented are descriptive. The conclusion is too brief and does not give a robust representation of the scope of study. Only ACM Computer Science dataset was used, and yet the author seems to generalised the findings across other fields.Are the data presentations, including visualizations, well-suited to represent the data? Neither appropriate and clear nor inappropriate and unclear There are no objective performance measures of claims like "acceptance", "better", "genuine", and the likes. Some figure captions are vague and do not spell out exactly what is presented. Some other figures are not well interpreted, for example, figure 7.How clearly do the authors discuss, explain, and interpret their findings and potential next steps for the research? Neither clearly nor unclearly Some recommendations were made for further research; however, combining the results and discussion sections into one makes the writing deviate from standard norms. Also, the discussion was not backed up by any scholarly literature. No limitations of the study were identified.Is the preprint likely to advance academic knowledge? Somewhat likely If improved, it can address the bias in relying solely on the journal impact factor (which can be prone to manipulation) as a measure of journal quality when selecting an appropriate venue for journal publication.Would it benefit from language editing? Yes There are a lot of informal words used and non-academic tones.Would you recommend this preprint to others? Yes, but it needs to be improvedIs it ready for attention from an editor, publisher or broader audience? No, it needs a major revisionCompeting interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The authors declare that they used generative AI to come up with new ideas for their review.
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