Conceived and designed the experiments: RM ALP. Performed the experiments: RM. Analyzed the data: RM ALP LNC. Wrote the paper: RM ALP LNC.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The journal Impact factor (IF) is generally accepted to be a good measurement of the relevance/quality of articles that a journal publishes. In spite of an, apparently, homogenous peer-review process for a given journal, we hypothesize that the country affiliation of authors from developing Latin American (LA) countries affects the IF of a journal detrimentally.
Seven prestigious international journals, one multidisciplinary journal and six serving specific branches of science, were examined in terms of their IF in the Web of Science. Two subsets of each journal were then selected to evaluate the influence of author's affiliation on the IF. They comprised contributions
The study shows a significantly lower IF in the group of the subsets of non-collaborative LA articles and thus that country affiliation of authors from non-developed LA countries does affect the IF of a journal detrimentally. There are no data to indicate whether the lower IFs of LA articles were due to their inherent inferior quality/relevance or psycho-social trend towards under-citation of articles from these countries. However, further study is required since there are foreseeable consequences of this trend as it may stimulate strategies by editors to turn down articles that tend to be under-cited.
Scientists from developing countries seek arduously to publish their papers in prestigious mainstream international journals. Submission acceptance influences their career advancement and success in obtaining research grant funding. In particular, many Latin American research funding agencies and institutional committees responsible for deciding on promotions or selection of candidates to academic positions, frequently base their decisions on the impact factor (IF, produced by the Journal Citation Report, JCR, Thomson-Reuters) of the journals where the articles of the applicant have been published. More developed countries have also followed this procedure, like Italy
When dealing with the collective group data, however, the use of citation analysis agrees significantly with peer opinions. This has been the case for assessment of research departments
The question of the national contribution to the impact of an international journal has been pointed out
We have chosen to analyze the output of the four LA countries with the highest number of publications in the Web of Science (WoS) data base: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. In 2004 and 2005 the total contribution of these 4 countries represented 93.2% of the total LA WoS entries. This output was measured in six journals with a high reputation in their areas of knowledge and one multidisciplinary journal: Astrophysical Journal, Chemistry of Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Immunology, Physical Review Letters and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. A total of 1244 articles published in the years 2004 and 2005 with the above country's authorships were found in the WoS database. These 1244 articles were divided in two subsets for each journal: one with LA authorship only (total of 219 articles) and another one including both non-collaborative and collaborative articles with other countries, virtually all being developed countries (219+1025 = 1244). The 2006 IFs of the two groups for each journal were calculated by the sum of citations given in 2006 to articles published in 2004 and 2005 divided by the number of articles published in these years. The same procedure was followed to calculate the IFs of groups of articles in these journals from five developed countries, namely, England, France, Germany, Japan and USA, for the purpose of comparison.
Attention must be given to the fact that the IF calculated according to this methodology does not correspond to the IF presented by the JCR, since the JCR and the WoS operate different journal collections. The reason for our using the WoS database is the availability of data to calculate the journal IF for countries which was not available in the standard JCR. This article and others present pitfalls in the standard calculation of IF
The trend of lower IF for LA countries' articles is readily noticed in
Journal | Total | Argentina | Brazil | Chile | Mexico | |||||
total | Country only | total | Country only | total | Country only | total | Country only | |||
Astrophys. J. | IF 2006 | |||||||||
citations in 2006 | 27643 | 133 | 12 | 368 | 50 | 1027 | 20 | 887 | 47 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 5161 | 29 | 4 | 69 | 17 | 163 | 8 | 176 | 20 | |
Chem. Materials | IF 2006 | |||||||||
citations in 2006 | 8276 | 9 | 7 | 32 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 43 | 6 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 1790 | 5 | 3 | 19 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 3 | |
J. Am. Chem. Soc. | IF 2006 | |||||||||
citations in 2006 | 43558 | 66 | 13 | 148 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 205 | 12 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 6652 | 14 | 4 | 16 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 3 | |
J. Biol. Chem. | IF 2006 | |||||||||
citations in 2006 | 63051 | 169 | 49 | 247 | 68 | 110 | 30 | 167 | 15 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 11875 | 38 | 15 | 58 | 21 | 24 | 8 | 48 | 6 | |
Proc. Natl. Acad Sci. USA | IF 2006 | |||||||||
citations in 2006 | 56903 | 100 | 12 | 237 | 13 | 72 | 43 | 423 | 6 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 6798 | 22 | 1 | 29 | 2 | 13 | 6 | 53 | 1 | |
J. Immunol. | IF 2006 | |||||||||
citations in 2006 | 22026 | 50 | 18 | 165 | 35 | 19 | 28 | 70 | 0 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 3860 | 13 | 4 | 36 | 11 | 4 | 1 | 14 | 0 | |
Phys. Rev. Lett. | IF 2006 | |||||||||
citations in 2006 | 43796 | 336 | 27 | 983 | 122 | 41 | 12 | 877 | 34 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 7784 | 71 | 11 | 145 | 36 | 13 | 5 | 128 | 13 | |
Data were collected from Thomson Reuters WoS data base. Two columns of IF are shown for each country for selected journals. One is for the total of articles of the country and the other for articles with affiliation of the country only, without collaboration. For each journal the corresponding 2006 citations of 2004+2005 articles and the number of 2004+2005 articles are shown, below each IF value .The dashed lines correspond to indefinite or imprecise IF for 0 articles or very low number of articles (typically 1).
If we consider the collaborative LA articles only, the average IF raises to 5.25 (not shown in
Journal | Total | England | France | Germany | Japan | USA | ||||||
total | Country only | total | Country only | total | Country only | total | Country only | total | Country only | |||
Astrophys. J. | IF 2006 | |||||||||||
citations in 2006 | 27843 | 3933 | 141 | 2101 | 96 | 4935 | 262 | 2835 | 775 | 22921 | 10793 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 5161 | 524 | 42 | 331 | 24 | 589 | 57 | 489 | 205 | 3953 | 2093 | |
Chem. Materials | IF 2006 | |||||||||||
citations in 2006 | 8276 | 426 | 273 | 642 | 408 | 874 | 502 | 924 | 648 | 3132 | 2560 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 1709 | 91 | 52 | 193 | 113 | 168 | 98 | 206 | 152 | 620 | 482 | |
J. Am. Chem. Soc. | IF 2006 | |||||||||||
citations in 2006 | 43586 | 2570 | 1527 | 1842 | 809 | 3444 | 1988 | 5581 | 5033 | 26443 | 22473 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 6852 | 372 | 216 | 303 | 139 | 502 | 294 | 850 | 725 | 3702 | 3137 | |
J. Biol. Chem. | IF 2006 | |||||||||||
citations in 2006 | 83051 | 4671 | 2151 | 4081 | 1953 | 5546 | 2700 | 7116 | 4269 | 38445 | 29022 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 11875 | 823 | 378 | 797 | 403 | 995 | 505 | 1299 | 854 | 6716 | 5138 | |
Proc. Natl. Acad Sci. USA | IF 2006 | |||||||||||
citations in 2006 | 56903 | 4369 | 16.46 | 3197 | 1146 | 4585 | 1733 | 3792 | 1556 | 43964 | 32418 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 6798 | 486 | 186 | 368 | 145 | 496 | 189 | 449 | 217 | 4964 | 3769 | |
J. Immunol. | IF 2006 | |||||||||||
citations in 2006 | 22028 | 1882 | 801 | 1426 | 672 | 2169 | 965 | 2328 | 1066 | 14241 | 10010 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 3860 | 306 | 134 | 256 | 130 | 354 | 164 | 357 | 204 | 2369 | 1756 | |
Phys. Rev. Lett. | IF 2006 | |||||||||||
citations in 2006 | 43796 | 4357 | 1018 | 6276 | 1742 | 9798 | 3479 | 5327 | 1961 | 22372 | 12264 | |
articles 2004+2005 | 7784 | 732 | 206 | 1080 | 372 | 1612 | 629 | 845 | 392 | 3568 | 2028 | |
Data were collected from Thomson Reuters WoS data base. Two columns of IF are shown for each country for selected journals. One is for the total of articles of the country and the other for articles with affiliation of the country only, without collaboration. For each journal the corresponding 2006 citations of 2004+2005 articles and the number of 2004+2005 articles are shown below each IF value.
The visibility of scientific research, as a rule, benefits from increasing collaboration
The situation is different, however, in LA countries. An interesting point is the extent of collaboration in articles from these seven journals: the percentage of 77% is considerably higher than those of the collaborative effort of these four LA countries in the context of the whole WoS database: Argentina 40.3%, Brazil 26.7%, Chile 50.2% and Mexico 53.9%. This could be a measure of the effort required to publish in these seven prestigious journals and the importance of international collaboration to accomplish it.
The most important question in regard to these data is why the subsets of the non-collaborative articles of LA countries present such a low IF as compared to the overall IF of the journals? In principle one would expect a relatively homogenous review process for all manuscripts submitted to a given journal and the same rigor for their acceptance. However, the 219 non-collaborative articles from LA fall dramatically behind the average impact of these seven journals. The groups of non-collaborative articles that were closest to the overall IF were Argentina /J. Immunol. (4.50/5.71), Brazil / J. Am. Chem. Soc. (5.67/6.55) and Chile / Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (7.17/8.37). Brazil has strong research groups in chemistry
Regardless of the reason for the under citation of non-collaborative LA articles a drawback may be foreseeable in regard to the competition for editorial space in the high-status journals: would an Editor, concerned about the journal IF, consider that the acceptance of a LA article might weight against its value? After all, it is known that several strategies for increasing the IF are used by editors
In conclusion, scientometric data render it possible to detect the under-citation trend of non-collaborative LA articles of specific prestigious journals but provides no elements to decide the basis for this phenomenon. Possible reasons could include psycho-social bias or real differences in scientific relevance of these articles. The only way to address this argument would be to conduct a detailed peer analysis of the articles, trying to establish a correlation between citation and quality, as has been done in similar circumstances
We thank Dr. Luiz R. Travassos for discussions and the thoughtful review of the manuscript.