Paper Mela et al

[Donatella Ugolini]

To Dr. Stegmann

I have read your previous mail; my apologies for this delayed reply. A
misunderstanding occurred between Dr. Mela and me: each of us thought the
other had replied to your mail.
To respond to your queries, Impact Factor (IF) was calculated by
multiplying the number of articles with the IF of the corresponding journal
(1995 edition), adding up the products and dividing the final sum by the
number of published papers.
I read with great interest your and Dr. Garfield's comments and suggestions.
As for the first observation, we will take into account your suggestion to
include a more detailed methodological description. We currently have a
paper on ophthalmology research impact in press. If possible, we will try
to better explain our methods. As for data on Germany, I think that a
different method leads to different result. We specify in our article that
we took into account only those journals classified as oncological by
Current Contents, and we are aware that as a result we may have overlooked
some cancer research articles published elsewhere. While ours are
macrodata, we think that a trend is evident.
Finally, with regard to german language, we are controlling our database to
verify data.

Yours sincerely,

Donatella Ugolini