Analysis and news
Another extraordinary year for citation impact Nandita Quaderi explains how Covid-19 continues to affect the citation network, and introduces a new kind of citation distortion
Covid-19 changed our world in thousands of ways. It caused millions of deaths, strained health systems worldwide, grounded flights and enforced isolation on communities used to living in a global and connected world. More than two years on, we are starting to understand some of the silver linings associated with the pandemic – from unprecedented scientific collaboration, to the accelerated speed of innovation and discovery for therapies and vaccines. For the second year, the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) from Clarivate demonstrates the enormous impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on scholarly publishing (see more on page 32). The annual JCR release enables the
research community to evaluate the world’s high-quality academic journals using a range of indicators, descriptive data and visualisations. This year’s JCR contains more than 21,000 journals, across 254 research categories from 114 countries. It is based on 2021 data compiled from the Web of Science Core Collection, the leading collection of quality journals, books and conference proceedings in the world’s largest publisher-neutral global citation database. The data include 35,000 publications (journals, books and conference proceedings), 2.7 million citable items and 145 million cited references. Through this data we can fully appreciate and understand the enormous impact of the academic community’s rapid response to Covid-19. Last year’s release was the first to show the impact of Covid-19 research, with a rise in Journal Impact Factors (JIF) across the board. This year, we continue to observe increases in citation impact for journals in the fields of general medicine, critical care, public health, infectious diseases, immunology and basic biomedical sciences.
Exceptional performance Perhaps the most surprising increase is that of The Lancet. The general medical journal increased its JIF to 202.731, which moves it to the #1 position in the general and internal medicine category, overtaking the New England Journal of Medicine – the
24 Research Information Summer 2022
top-ranked title in that category since the first release of the JCR 45 years ago. Of the 10 articles with the highest citation count in 2021, three appeared in The Lancet. They were all Covid-19 articles and describe the clinical features of patients in Wuhan infected with the virus; examine risk factors for mortality; and examine the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of cases in Wuhan. This year, Nature earns the distinction of being the first ever journal to accumulate more than one million total citations in one year. Nature published 16 items with over 500 JIF citations – of which 12 items were Covid-19 related. To put this in context, the first Journal Citation Reports in 1975
“We have found a new trend in citation distortion, which we have defined as ‘self-stacking’”
summarised the 1974 data from the Science Citation Index and included a total of four million citations in the whole data extraction (compared to 143 million citations this year). Seven journals had JIFs of more than 100
for the first time, all of which published high quantities of Covid-19-related research.
Upholding research integrity and a new type of citation distortion While it is important to acknowledge and celebrate the journals and research communities that have made exceptional impacts on their fields over the last two years, upholding the importance of research integrity and sound citation practice is important too. Every year, our editorial team analyses the data to ensure the metrics accurately reflect the contribution of those journals to the literature. Every year we identify journals where the citation data show anomalies when compared to others in the same category. We suppress their JIFs, including where there is evidence of excessive journal self- citation and/or citation stacking.
We do not presume a motive or accuse
these journals of wrongdoing – sometimes it may be accidental, sometimes it may be malicious, and it is not always black and white. Suppressed journals remain in the Web of Science Core Collection – although they may be subject to re-evaluation and will be removed from coverage if they fail – and will be eligible for inclusion in the Journal Citation Reports again the following year. We have found a new trend in citation
distortion, which we have defined as ‘self- stacking’. This is where the journal contains one or more documents with citations that are highly concentrated to the JIF numerator of the title itself – for example, a review or retrospective which predominantly includes citations that would contribute to the journal’s JIF. This is the first year we have formally defined the criteria for self-stacking suppression, and we have issued a warning to six journals. Going forward, journal self- stacking will result in suppression of JIF. Scholarly publishing continues to
be based on trust, but new forms of manipulation have emerged as some stakeholders seek to gain an unfair advantage, and fraudulent enterprises have appeared that exploit the increased pressure to publish and be cited. One of the factors contributing to the growth of citation manipulation is the over-emphasis on bibliometric indicators during research assessment and the misuse of journal-level metrics to directly evaluate researchers. It is wonderful to see high-impact journals get the attention they deserve, but seeking to secure high citation impact without a solid foundation should not be a goal in itself for researchers and can damage the integrity of the scholarly record. This is not a phenomenon that can be stopped solely by metrics providers, but needs cooperation and active participation from publishers, institutions, funders and governments. We continuously review content with the goal of developing additional screening for distortions of the JIF, and will continue to do so, considering every option to promote best practice for research, citation behaviour and research evaluation.
Nandita Quaderi is editor-in-chief and vice president of Web of Science Editorial
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