How Valued is Your Article?: Scrutinising the Parameters

 

Majority of reputed educational institutions in India values professionals with multiple publications, simultaneously faculties themselves also put equivalent importance to it (kumar & Israel, 2013). Along with increase in number of publications, the quality of publications also has become an increasing concern among professionals and institutions. With the rise in the number of spurious journals and unethical practices in the field of research publications, it has become of utmost importance to investigate the quality of journals and articles published in it.
Impact factor is one of the journal metrics that has become of utmost importance for institutions and authors across the country, also influenced by the fact that UGC has started giving importance to it. Rising awareness of impact factor of a journal and the probability of its use in evaluation have affected researchers’ publication behavior and intentions; this has become one of the primary criteria while choosing a journal to publish their article (Malaviya, 2004). What makes this whole issue further complicated is the lack of detailed knowledge about impact factor as a measurement criteria.
Impact factor is a journal metric, a quality measurement of journals, copyrighted by Clarivate Analytics. This is in the simplest terms a ratio of citations  and number of articles. But the complications start due to the way it is measured. Firstly, the calculations are computed in a way where the citations of particular articles in first 2 years are not counted, which could be a lot. Secondly, the citations are only counted from articles published in web of science indexing, which is only one of the indexing agencies, not the only one. Citations from SCOPUS or other valued indexing agencies are not counted for. Thirdly, impact-factor is language-biased, leaning to English primarily. Fourthly, the most ironical problem is that this impact factor provides a quality measurement for a journal, not an author. For example, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology is an APA journal, which has received an impact-factor of 4.632 in 2019. When an author is publishing his/her work in that journal in 2020, they will be valued because of being published in a high impact-factor journal, for which they themselves have not contributed anything. The impact-factor that was received by the journal was due to previous authors’ publications and respective citations. 
Considering the above factors, the obvious question that arises is then why impact-factor remains to be one of the most valued parameters to judge quality of publications, in spite of it being specifically a journal-metric and not an author-metric. Probable answer to this could be found in the fact that high impact-factor journals have very less acceptance rate of publications, i.e., it is difficult to get one’s paper accepted in those journals. So, being published in a high impact-factor puts a value to the article, in an indirect manner.
In comparison to impact factor, cite-score (by SCOPUS), the other journal-metric, is a better quality measurement; as in this case the article doesn’t loose out on any citation in the previous years, i.e., the years it is counted for.
To judge an author’s quality as a researcher or the quality of his/her published work it is preferable to follow the h-index, which is an author-metric and thus gives more reliable and individual value dependent on citations of that author’s work.
In case of choosing a journal, it is best to go the websites of web of science or SCOPUS or other similar authentic indexing agencies and check for the year-wise number of publications and citation scores of those journals. That probably is the most authentic way to differentiate a quality journal from a spurious one.

References

Kumar, P. & Israel, D. (2013). An exploratory investigation into faculty motivation to publish: a study of business school faculty in India. International Journal of Management in education, 7(3).
Malaviya, G.N. (2004). View-point - Citation, Impact-factor and Indian Journal of Surgery. Indian Journal of Surgery, Vol. 66, No. 6, 2004, pp. 371-375