ABS: Jones, The impact of _Alcohol and Alcoholism_ among...

[Gretchen Whitney]

The impact of Alcohol and Alcoholism among substance abuse journals
Jones AW
ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
34: (1) 25-34 JAN-FEB 1999

Document type: Article
Language: English
Cited References: 36
Times
Cited: 1


Abstract: This article concerns the question of journal impact factor and
other bibliometric indicators made available by the Institute for
Scientific Information in their Journal Citation Report for 1996. The
impact factors of journals within the subject category 'substance abuse'
are listed along with total citations, immediacy indices, and cited
half-lives. The relationship between cited and citing journals is
discussed with the main focus on the data available for Alcohol and
Alcoholism. Some of the problems and limitations of bibliometric measures
of productivity are dealt with, especially when these are used to evaluate
the work of individual scientists. Although bibliometric measures are easy
to compute, they become difficult to interpret, such as when dealing with
collaborative research and the problem posed by multiple authorship. The
need to adjust impact factors and citation counts for the number of
co-authors in a paper becomes important when credit has to be attributed
to one individual from a multi-author paper. This is often necessary in
connection with grant applications and when making decisions about
academic promotion and tenure. The impact factor of Alcohol and Alcoholism
has increased steadily over the past 5 years, even after adjusting for the
number of self-citations, which resulted in an even greater increase in
impact. However, the impact factors of substance abuse journals are
generally low, compared with disciplines such as immunology, genetics, and
biochemistry. Some suggestions are made for increasing the impact factors
of substance abuse journals if this is considered necessary. But instead
of paying attention to the impact factor of a journal, scientists should
give more consideration to the speed and efficiency of the editorial
handling of their manuscripts and particularly to the quality and
timeliness of the peer review.

KeyWords Plus:
CITATION ANALYSIS, SCIENCE POLICY, AUTHORSHIP, INDICATORS, TOOL

Addresses:
Jones AW, Linkoping Univ Hosp, Dept Forens Toxicol, S-58185 Linkoping,
Sweden.
Linkoping Univ Hosp, Dept Forens Toxicol, S-58185 Linkoping, Sweden.

Publisher:
OXFORD UNIV PRESS, OXFORD

IDS Number:
167JR

ISSN:
0735-0414

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Gretchen Whitney, PhD                                     tel 423.974.7919
School of Information Sciences                            fax 423.974.4967
University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37996 USA           gwhitney at utk.edu
http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/
jESSE:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/jesse.html
SIGMETRICS:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
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