Impact Factors

Jun 27, 2022 | Scholarly publishing

If you work in academia, you’re bound to be familiar with Impact Factors. You’ll probably know that “good journals” have an Impact Factor, and you may know that “really good journals” have a high Impact Factor. But do you know how Impact Factors are calculated? Or how journals are ranked? In short, do you know what an Impact Factor actually is?

If not, don’t worry. Consider this your Impact Factor 101.

An Impact Factor (IF) is, in essence, a fairly simple sum. A journal’s 2021 IF is calculated using citations received by that journal in 2021 for articles published in the previous two years (2019 + 2020), divided by the number of articles the journal published in those two years.

So, if in 2021 a journal received 13 citations to articles published in 2019 and 17 citations to articles published in 2020 (a total of 30) and published 35 articles over those two years; it would have a 2021 IF of 0.857.

The reason that only the previous two years are taken into consideration is simply to level the playing field. If you took into consideration citations to articles from a journal’s full history, then it would be extremely biased towards older journals who naturally have a far larger number of articles to choose from.

At the end of each year, the citations for each journal are counted and put into the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) which are published the following summer.

Which articles count towards an IF?

You have written an article published in a journal which is included in the JCR and, let’s say, it’s been published this year. Any citations your article receives next year or the year after will contribute towards the journal’s IF for those years.

Not everything published by a journal counts as “Article Content”, only Research Articles, Review Articles, Short Reports, etc. Editorials, Book Reviews, Letters to the Editor, etc, are not classed as Article Content so won’t be counted in the number of articles published. Any citations they receive the two years following publication will, however, be included in the citation count.

Alright, so what is a “good” or “high” Impact Factor?

The simple answer to that is the bigger the IF (i.e. the higher the number), the better it is. But, of course, it’s not quite as simple as that.

Different disciplines are likely to receive different levels of citations. For example, a scientific journal publishing up to the minute research in a fast-moving field is likely to receive more citations within the “IF window” (those two years after an article is published) than a humanities journal in a field which moves somewhat slower. An IF of 1.000 might be brilliant in one discipline, but be pretty poor in another.

To allow for this, journals are split into categories within the JCR and ranked within those. Therefore, rather than looking at their IF alone, to find the best journals within your field you should find the most relevant categories and see which journals rank highest within those.

For more information on the Journal Citation Reports (and Impact Factors, naturally), check out Clarivate’s website here.

Publishing Roles

Jun 14, 2022 | Scholarly publishing

When following your manuscript through from submission to acceptance, there are many different people and several different teams with whom you will come into contact. This can be confusing, to say the least!

So just who does what at each stage and, more importantly, who on earth are you supposed to go to if you have a question?!

The Managing Editor

That’s us – hello!

Sometimes referred to as an “Editorial Assistant” or “Journal Administrator”, the Managing Editor oversees the smooth running of the peer-review process. Our expertise is in the peer review-process itself, rather than the subject matter of the journal; we are the submission system’s “super users”, if you like. We keep an eye on everything to make sure that peer review runs smoothly and chase up anybody who needs it – authors, reviewers, even the editors sometimes! – allowing the academic editors to focus on the research.

You will hear from us every time you need to do something e.g., make some corrections, submit a form, or remember that you’ve got a revision deadline coming up…

The Managing Editor is your main point of contact for the journal during peer review, so anytime you have a question, it’s us you should email. Even if we’re not able to help you personally, we will know who to direct your query to.

The Editor-in-Chief

The Editor-in-Chief (EiC) is, as you would expect, the person in charge of the journal. He or she will be an expert with a broad overview of the journal’s field and will decide what content goes into the journal, how the peer-review process is run, and, to an extent, how the published content appears. How hands-on the EiC is differs journal to journal and EiC to EiC, but generally they will be the person making the final decision based on the recommendation of the reviewers and Associate Editors.

For most journals, it is best to get in touch with the Managing Editor and ask them to pass your comment or query on to the Editor-in-Chief rather than contacting them directly.

The Associate Editors

Mid-to-large journals tend to have a team of editors, rather than just one who deals with every submission personally.

There are many, many names for Associate Editors (on some journals they are even known as “Managing Editors”, just to confuse everybody) but they are the academic experts who aid the EiC by giving him or her their expert opinion and selecting reviewers for articles within their specialism.

A good editorial team of will have all of the niche subjects within the journal’s scope covered between them so that every manuscript submitted will have an expert eye cast over it, even if it’s slightly out of the EiC’s personal specialism.

How much the Associate Editors are able to assist with enquiries again varies, so The Managing Editor should still be your first port of call.

Data for Editors

May 14, 2022 | Scholarly publishing

An email lands in your inbox to let you know that an editorial board meeting is on the horizon and the editors want to see a report on submissions. And guess who has the joy of putting that together? Ah… it’s you.

If the thought of doing a submissions report makes you want to start banging your head on your keyboard, then get yourself a coffee and read our top tips for putting together reports for editors.

1. Know what the data you’re putting in the report relates to.

“Well, obviously I’m going to know what the data is about, I ran the report!” we hear you say – but are you sure? Is it relating to original submissions alone, or are revised submissions included in the figures? Is the date range relating to the submission or decision dates – or both?

For example, it’s not uncommon to find that the system has given you two reports which ought to be relating to the same set of manuscripts; but one of them totals to 78 manuscripts and the other to, say, 103.

When/as/if this happens, it’s important to understand why as you need to be able to explain this difference to your editor(s) – e.g., “the one with 103 includes revised submissions and the other doesn’t”.

Top Tip #1: Wherever possible, have a look at the raw data so you can check what has and hasn’t been included and always, always check that the figures on your charts match up.

2. Present the data in a way that’s clear and easy to understand.

Again, obvious, right? Well, not always. We’re all busy (understatement) so it’s easy to just copy/paste whatever charts and tables the system spits out in whatever format they happen to be in and consider the job done. But do they actually make sense?

Is the font that the system reports use clear and easy to read? Is the chart title something that your editor(s) will understand or just the name of the report that you’ve run? If the system’s presented the data in a pie-chart, is this the best way to analyse that data or would it be clearer in a bar-graph?

Taking a bit of time to reformat may be tedious but it will mean less confusion and fewer queries heading your way once the report’s been circulated – a win/win situation.

Top Tip #2: Try to view the report through your editor(s) eyes and present the data in a way that’s going to make sense to them.

3. Include information that your editor(s) will want to see.

Some editorial boards (and/or publishers) give very clear guidelines on what information they want to see in a report, but others just ask you to send them some data. If your editor(s) has(ve) been a bit vague, then we would suggest you include the following:

• At-A-Glance Statistics – If you’re using ScholarOne, these give a great overview of the journal including the accept ratio for the last year, how many manuscripts are currently pending, and how long the oldest manuscript has gone without a decision.
• Geographical Data – In our experience, editors love to see where in the world their submissions are coming from and what the geographical spread of accepted manuscripts is. So, unless your journal is very niche and only gets submissions from a small area, always include this information.
• Submissions Received by Month – We would recommend that (unless anyone’s specified otherwise) you provide monthly submission figures for a period of at least a year, if not two. This will give a good indication of whether there’s been growth in the number of submissions, as well as showing which periods of the year tend to be quieter.
• Editor Turnaround Times – If your journal is run by a team of editors, this can be a useful one to include as it will flag up if any of them are taking considerably longer than the others to get manuscripts to a point of decision. The Editor-in-Chief will want to be aware of this if they are!

Top Tip #3: Think about what data to include for your particular journal and your particular editor(s).