The Birth of a Journal

Advanced Materials has come a long way since its modest beginning in 1989 as a “piggy back” journal in Angewandte Chemie. Some of its more recent achievements as well as innovations to foster the further development of the journal are presented in this Editorial. The ways in which the success of a journal can be measured in terms of quality and popularity are also discussed.     

15 Years of Advanced Materials: Past and Future

2003 marks 15 years of publication of Advanced Materials—the journal’s crystal anniversary. Crystals of all types—from liquid to photonic—have long occupied materials scientists, making this anniversary a particularly relevant one. The events and innovations that have contributed to the present success of Advanced Materials are highlighted in this Editorial and a glimpse is given of what this year holds in store.     

Online Manuscript Submission

Effective immediately, authors can submit articles to Advanced Materials in electronic form over the journal homepage at www.advmat.de . The new system offers a number of features which will be attractive to both authors and referees, including security, peace of mind, and speed of publication.     

Making an Impact in Materials Science

Published scientific information comes in all shapes and sizes. This variety allows for freedom of expression and for the creative presentation of scientific developments, but unfortunately not all scientific information is of the same quality. Scientific journals provide one of the most important routes for the dissemination of this information, and therefore, those responsible for the journals are duty bound to adhere to the ethics of good science and to apply the most rigorous quality control and selection procedures possible. While all top journals are dedicated to these aims, it is difficult to quantify the effectiveness of the procedures applied, and questions of whether a particular type of presentation of scientific research is more attractive than another type is really a question of taste. However, there are some indicators, such as Impact Factors and journal‐usage statistics, which provide some clues. In the following, I would like to present some information on the latest indicators as they relate to Advanced Materials, and provide some news of upcoming developments.     

The Web of Scientometrics

A statistical overview is given of the first 50 volumes of the journal Scientometrics.Authorship and co-authorship characteristics, as well as citation and reference patterns of the journal are analysed. Geographic and thematic maps of its papers are presented. A brief outlook to the future prospects and challenges is attempted     

Superior identification index: Quantifying the capability of academic journals to recognize good research

In this paper we present “superior identification index” (SII), a metric to quantify the capability of academic journals to recognize top papers restricted by specific time window and study field. Intuitively, SII is the percentage of papers from a journal in the top p% papers in the field. SII provides flexible framework to make trade-offs on journal quality and quantity, as p rises it puts more weight on quantity and less weight on quality. Concerns on the p selection are discussed, and extended metrics of SII, including superior identification efficiency (SIE) and paper rank percentile (PRP), were proposed to sketch other dimensions of journal performance. Based on bibliometric data from ecological field, we find that as p increases, the correlation between SIE and JIF first rises then drops, indicating that JIF might most likely reflect “how well a journal identifies the top 26–34% papers in the field”. Hopefully, the new proposed SII metric and its extensions could promote the quality awareness and provide flexible tools for research evaluation.

     

The first mover and the challenger: The relationship between two journals in organization research

Many new journals are started in response to increasing specialization and limited space in existing journals. In this study two journals in organization research are studied,Administrative Science Quarterly as the first mover in the field andOrganization Studies as the challenger. It is shown that the new journal gradually differ from the old in terms of the national origin of its authors as well as the documents cited. It is concluded that the scientific journal market may not mirror the copy-cat behaviour found among newspapers or companies in other markets.     

The journal relative impact: an indicator for journal assessment

This paper presents the journal relative impact (JRI), an indicator for scientific evaluation of journals. The JRI considers in its calculation the different culture of citations presented by the Web of Science subject categories. The JRI is calculated considering a variable citation window. This citation window is defined taking into account the time required by each subject category for the maturation of citations. The type of document considered in each subject category depends on its outputs in relation to the citations. The scientific performance of each journal in relation to each subject category that it belongs to is considered allowing the comparison of the scientific performance of journals from different fields. The results obtained show that the JRI can be used for the assessment of the scientific performance of a given journal and that the SJR and SNIP should be used to complement the information provided by the JRI. The JRI presents good features as stability over time and predictability.     

Materials influence on design: A decade of development

This review paper evaluates the current status of the exploitation of engineering materials for design purposes with respect to developments in the respective disciplines, through a structured review of the content of Materials & Design journal over 30 years of publication. This review updates strategically the two previous reviews, with an emphasis this time placed on changes occurring over the last 10 years, making appropriate reference to the earlier investigations to explain noteworthy developments. The new information presented is again derived from the abundance of technical knowledge contained from within the many varied and growing number of high quality articles in the journal, supplemented by the author’s personal comments and experience of the field.     

Studying the international diffusion of a national scientific journal

The purpose of this paper is to apply concepts of the diffusion of innovations research in thestudy of the international diffusion of a formerly national scientific journal, Annales ZoologiciFennici. The study was conducted using bibliometric methodology. The diffusion of the journalwas described through citations of the journal and through the development of the nationaldistribution of its contributors. The compatibility of the journal as well as the decrease ofcomplexity were found to have an influence on diffusion. Bibliometric methods were able torepresent the international diffusion of a scientific journal.     

Commercial scientific journals and their editors in Edinburgh, 1819–1832

This paper explores the editorial policies and practices of three scientific journal published in Edinburgh in the first half of the 19th century. The first of these was the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (1819–1826), and its continuation as the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1826–1854). It was edited until 1824 by Robert Jameson, Edinburgh's professor of natural history, and David Brewster, who was a natural philosopher, scientific writer, and editor. Brewster left in 1824 to found his own journal, the Edinburgh Journal of Science (1824–1832). The third journal published in Edinburgh in this period was the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science (1829–1831), edited by Henry H. Cheek and William Ainsworth, two medical students at the University of Edinburgh. All three journals were direct competitors, being strikingly similar in form and content. As well as competing with Jameson's journal for readers and authors, Cheek and Ainsworth also used their journal to directly attack him in print. This paper sheds new light on the ways the editorship of these journals was used not only to consolidate and extend circles of patronage in early 19th-century science, but also to challenge existing centres of authority.     

Putting astronomy on the map: The launch of the first geographical-astronomical journal

In 1798, astronomer Franz Xaver von Zach in Gotha and publisher Friedrich Justin Bertuch in Weimar launched the first astronomical-geographical journal, Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden (AGE). The journal was intended to provide professionals and interested lay readership with high-quality maps, information about new discoveries, and statistical data. The periodical was shaped by Zach's expertise and Bertuch's economic potential. Their extraordinary collaboration and their different conceptions of a specialised periodical also played a role in how the journal developed. This paper examines the collaboration between the editor and the publisher of the AGE and their different ideas of the journal's purpose. By analysing the content of the AGE during Zach's time as editor, as well as shortly thereafter, and comparing them to Zach's second journal, the Monatliche Correspondenz, this paper shows the differences between a scientific journal aimed at a professional readership and one intended to address an interested lay readership by providing information, maps, and illustrations. The following pages illustrate how Zach's and Bertuch's ideas of a successful journal were reflected in the structure and content of the periodicals.     

The iCE approach for journal evaluation

Recent research has shown that simple graphical representations of research performance can be obtained using two-dimensional maps based on impact (i) and citations (C). The product of impact and citations leads to an energy term (E). Indeed, using E as the third coordinate, three-dimensional landscape maps can be prepared. In this paper, instead of using the traditional impact factor and total citations received for journal evaluation, Article Influence^TM and Eigenfactor^TM are used as substitutes. Article Influence becomes a measure of quality (i.e. a proxy for impact factor) and Eigenfactor is a proxy for size/quantity (like citations) and taken together, the product is an energy-like term. This can be used to measure the influence/prestige of a journal. It is also possible to propose a p-factor (where p = E ^1/3) as an alternative measure of the prestige or prominence of a journal which plays the equivalent role of the h-index.     

40 Years of Strain: A Retrospective Review*

Abstract: The paper provides a picture of the changes and advances in the field of strain measurement and related topics, as represented by the contents of the journal Strain, from its inception in 1965 to the present day.     

Die Editionsgeschichte der Wochenschrift <Emphasis Type="Italic">Die medicinische Reform</Emphasis> (1848/49) und der Briefwechsel Rudolf Virchows mit seinem Verleger Georg Reimer

The medical journal Medicinische Reform. Eine Wochenschrift edited by Rudolf Virchow and Rudolf Leubuscher in Berlin from July 1848 to June 1849 was in spite of its short life-time one of the most important and influential periodicals during the time of German revolution and medical reforms in the middle of the 19th century. The paper gives a view of the history of edition of this ephemeral but outstanding journal as an essential source for our knowledge of the development of social medicine in Germany. Moreover it can be seen as an example for a new kind of modern scientific journals. Printing the Medicinische Reform through the years of revolution in 1848/49 was on the merits of the publishing house of Georg Reimer. In 1849 Virchow himself stopped editing the paper. Several reprints show the importance of the periodical for the history of siences (1879 Berlin, partial by Virchow; 1975 Hildesheim; 1983 Berlin). The article ends with a first complete publication of the correspondence between Virchow and Reimer about the weekly Medicinische Reform.     

A new reference standard for citation analysis in chemistry and related fields based on the sections of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Chemical Abstracts</Emphasis>

Citation analysis for evaluative purposes requires reference standards, as publication activity and citation habits differ considerably among fields. Reference standards based on journal classification schemes are fraught with problems in the case of multidisciplinary and general journals and are limited with respect to their resolution of fields. To overcome these shortcomings of journal classification schemes, we propose a new reference standard for chemistry and related fields that is based on the sections of the Chemical Abstracts database. We determined the values of the reference standard for research articles published in 2000 in the biochemistry sections of Chemical Abstracts as an example. The results show that citation habits vary extensively not only between fields but also within fields. Overall, the sections of Chemical Abstracts seem to be a promising basis for reference standards in chemistry and related fields for four reasons: (1) The wider coverage of the pertinent literature, (2) the quality of indexing, (3) the assignment of papers published in multidisciplinary and general journals to their respective fields, and (4) the resolution of fields on a lower level (e.g. mammalian biochemistry) than in journal classification schemes (e.g. biochemistry & molecular biology).     

Correlation between the Journal Impact Factor and three other journal citation indices

To determine the degree of correlation among journal citation indices that reflect the average number of citations per article, the most recent journal ratings were downloaded from the websites publishing four journal citation indices: the Institute of Scientific Information’s journal impact factor index, Eigenfactor’s article influence index, SCImago’s journal rank index and Scopus’ trend line index. Correlations were determined for each pair of indices, using ratings from all journals that could be identified as having been rated on both indices. Correlations between the six possible pairings of the four indices were tested with Spearman’s rho. Within each of the six possible pairings, the prevalence of identifiable errors was examined in a random selection of 10 journals and among the 10 most discordantly ranked journals on the two indices. The number of journals that could be matched within each pair of indices ranged from 1,857 to 6,508. Paired ratings for all journals showed strong to very strong correlations, with Spearman’s rho values ranging from 0.61 to 0.89, all p < 0.001. Identifiable errors were more common among scores for journals that had very discordant ranks on a pair of indices. These four journal citation indices were significantly correlated, providing evidence of convergent validity (i.e. they reflect the same underlying construct of average citability per article in a journal). Discordance in the ranking of a journal on two indices was in some cases due to an error in one index.     

The authorship and internationality of Industrial Engineering journals

This paper surveys 32 renowned Industrial Engineering (IE) journals with regard to authorship for the period of 1996–2005. The findings show that the USA was the top contributing country, accounting for approximately one-third of the total number of articles. The 80/20 rule and the entropy measure consistently identify Issues in Science and Technology (IST), Industrial Engineer (IE), and R&D Magazine (RDM) as journals of high country concentration, or journals of low internationality. Conversely, Journal of Materials Processing Technology (JMPT), Production Planning & Control (PPC), and Technovation (TNV) have the highest degree of country diversity, or internationality. The quality of a journal, as expressed by impact factors, its internationality, and its number of articles published, are found to be independent of each other.     

The journal download immediacy index (DII): experiences using a Chinese full-text database

Relationships between the journal download immediacy index (DII) and some citation indicators are studied. The Chinese full-text database CNKI is used for data collection. Results suggest that the DII can be considered as an independent indicator, but that it also has predictive value for other indicators, such as a journal’s h-index. In case a journal cannot yet have an impact factor—because its citation history within the database is too short—the DII can be used for a preliminary evaluation. The article provides results related to the CNKI database as a whole and additionally, some detailed information about agricultural and forestry journals.