HighWire PressRelative Strength of HighWire-affiliated Publishers in Life Sciences

Relative Strength of HighWire-affiliated Publishers in Life Sciences
(as measured by number of titles, articles, citations and average impact factors)

According to Eugene Garfield of the Institute for Scientific Information, more than 70% of all citations in scientific literature are made to just 500 titles¹. These Top 500 titles can be sorted by subject and publisher to show the number of citations made to each publisher in each subject area.

Of the Top 500 titles, 143 titles publish wholly or primarily in the field of Life Science. This table also shows the proportion of articles and citations received by each publisher, and the average impact factor of the publisher's Life Science titles.

Top Life Science Titles (Based on data from ISI for 1999)

6%

Titles Articles Cites Impact

HighWire-affiliated Publishers 34% 42% 50% 11.780

Elsevier 22% 23% 18% 6.235

Academic Press 9% 10% 8% 3.253

Springer 3% 2% 2.551

Wiley 6% 4% 3% 3.480

Blackwell 2% 2% 1% 3.890

all others 20% 16% 19% 5.908

Results for the field of Medicine are similar (though not shown here).

	Titles	Articles	Cites	Impact
HighWire-affiliated Publishers	34%	42%	50%	11.780
Elsevier	22%	23%	18%	6.235
Academic Press	9%	10%	8%	3.253
Springer	3%	2%	2.551
Wiley	6%	4%	3%	3.480
Blackwell	2%	2%	1%	3.890
all others	20%	16%	19%	5.908

Notes on Measures of Journal Quality

The relative value of published research in peer-reviewed journals is a matter of opinion. There are no direct measures of the scientific importance of any given research paper or journal title. Publishers and libraries often use the number of titles published or held as a measure of quality.

This method of measuring quality is clearly inadequate, and leads to uninformed and misguided collection development decisions. However, there are three indirect measures of quality which can be used to indicate, if not actually establish, the importance of scientific literature.

Articles

The number of peer-reviewed articles published annually is a direct measure of publishing volume, which indicates in a general way the amount of author activity and reader support generated by a particular title or group of titles.

Citations

The number of citations which a particular article or journal receives is a measure of the influence exerted and the interest generated by the published content.

Impact Factor

The impact factor is a statistic developed by the Institute for Scientific Information to combine citations and articles in a single measure of significance. The impact factor is a ratio which indicates how frequently articles and titles are cited. This measurement can give great importance to a title even though it publishes relatively few articles.

¹ Eugene Garfield, The Significant Scientific Literature Appears in a Small Core of Journals, The Scientist, September 2, 1996.