1. Publishing Strategies for Building the Impact and Influence of a Journal
December 5th 2003
Mary Waltham,
Princeton, New Jersey

2. Journals compete for authors
Opinion leaders
Active
Influential
Such authors are strategic about where to publish
Particular community
The journal - brand

3. How is the choice of journal made?
High standards of quality ~ process and product – print + online
Rigorous,timely and fair peer review
Format – enough space to get ideas across clearly
Expert editorial oversight
Identity of the journal
Independence
Impact on peers

4. Author services: a tradition of excellence, speed and quality providing authors with
Highest impact
Many of xxxx journals have the top impact factors in the world in their fields)
Enhanced submission
Fast and transparent online submission service for most xxx journals, including manuscript tracking system
Rapid publication
Increased speed through advance online publication
Range of journals
XXX publishes a range of quality journals targeted at different scientific communities
Widest readership
Institutional site licences provide a potential readership free at point of access of several million
Free coverage to third world scientists via HINARI and SciDevNet
XXX fair deal
Authors retain copyright, so are free to reuse their papers in future printed work and post a copy on their website
No submission charges
Global visibility
Selected papers included in press release to more than 2,000 registered international journalists and media organisations
Advance e-alerts of tables of contents to up to half a million registered recipients linking directly to articles
Summaries and highlights of selected articles in XXX journals and websites ensure the widest reach among scientists
Inclusion in the key abstracting, indexing and linking service including ISI, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Crossref and full use of digital object identifier (DOI) numbers for online linking and functionality
Find out more:

5. Why does journal choice matter?
Career advancement
Grant support
Ability to attract students and fellows
Position of author in the published list also a “metric”
Impact factor of the journal
Speed of publication
In sum, choice of journal affects the reputation of the author

6. How fast must we publish?
Peer review takes time but..
So does publishing in discreet issues vs by article
As does print production
Key points here are the cost vs the time vs the individual community expectations and norms

7. How fast can we publish?

8. Peer review process Prompt and professional communication
Objective peer review – not settling old scores
Journal is clear and open about the role of reviewers – duty of confidentiality
Rejection – easier to accept with thoughtful reason
Editors use reviewers to advise not do their job
Editor clearly is judge of manuscript and reviewers comments

9. Editorial process Copy editing ~ cost versus value
Developmental or substantive editing~ improving accessibility of research – broader audience

10. LEX (text accessibility/lexical difficulty) ratings of selected publications and transcripts
LEX SCORE
Nature
+34.7
New Scientist
+7.2
Time
+1.6
Newspapers U.S. and U.K.
Ranger Rick (science for children)
-18.4
Television (primetime shows)
-36.4
Farmer talking to dairy cows
-56.0
Source: Donald P. Hayes, Department of Sociology, Cornell University

12. Visibility Print ~ is it on the library shelves?
Online ~ in advance of print – author driven, meta data and search engines, can the article be “found”?
General media – press release program
Journal must be “visible” to be read, cited and develop the brand

13. Impact Factors: Use and Abuse by Amin and Mabe

14. Impact Factors: Use and Abuse by Amin and Mabe

15. Impact factor
Different types of content are cited to different patterns
Different disciplines have distinct citation behaviors

17. Discipline
Journal
IF 2002
Review articles
Non-review articles
Economics
J. Econ Lit
4.312 13 6
Clinical Psychology
J. Clinical Psychology
4.333 5
205
Political Science
American Political Sci Review
2.448 31
Genetics and heredity
Nature genetics
26.7 12
210
Chemistry - multidisciplinary
Chemical Reviews
20.993
145 1
Health policy
Medical Care
3.228
163
Sociology
American Sociological Review
2.849 33
Mathematics
J Am. Math Soc
2.533 27
Physics - condensed matter
Adv. Phys
13.952 14

18. Impact factor
Within citeable content – a few articles count for the majority of citations

19. Distribution of the number of citations in five years for 500 biomedical papers published in Nature: 100 papers published in each of 1981, 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1996 were chosen at random, and for each paper the number of citations in the subsequent five years was counted.
Data provided by Grant Lewison (Department of Information Science, City University, London EC1V OHB, UK).

20. Beyond Impact factors..
Much discussion of over-reliance on Impact factor for judging research and research work
New online metrics will also drive behavior
Peer review post publication – is the paper ever downloaded?
“Amazon.com-esque” features- such as top articles, people who read this article also read…

21. Copied citations create renowned papers. by M. V. Simkin and V. P
Copied citations create renowned papers? by M.V. Simkin and V.P. Roychowdhury
Outcome of the model of random-citing scientists (with m = 3 and p = ¼) compared to actual citation data. Mathematical probability rather than genius can explain why some papers are cited a lot more than the others.

22. Analysis of 119,924 conference articles in computer science and related disciplines: Lawrence: Nature debates May 2002

23. “Not all articles originally rejected by a journal prove to be valueless” quote Eugene Wigner
Krebs
1953:Physiology/ medicine
Rejected by Nature published in Enzymologia
Michel
1988: Chemistry
Rejected by Nature published by Journal of Molecular Biology
Mullis
1993: Chemistry
Rejected by Nature + Science published in Methods in Enzymology
Cohen
1986:Physiology/Medicine
Rejected by first journal, published finally by Journal of Investigative Dermatology
Wigner
1963: Physics
Rejected by physics journal, published finally by Annals of Mathematics

24. Thank you!