Evidence map›Paper›PMID 37228829›Full record

ArticleScientometrics2023

Inconsistent quality signals: evidence from the regional journals.

Elena Veretennik, Maria Yudkevich

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Scientometrics, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Elena VeretennikHSE University, Moscow, Russia.ORCID 0000-0003-2911-9278
Maria YudkevichHSE University, Moscow, Russia.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Nowadays many countries and institutions use bibliometric assessment of journal quality in their research evaluation policies. However, bibliometric measures, such as impact factor or quartile, may provide a biased quality assessment for relatively new, regional, or non-mainstream journals, as these outlets usually do not possess a longstanding history, and may not be included into indexing databases. To reduce the information asymmetry between academic community (researchers, editors, policymakers) and journal management, we propose an alternative approach to evaluate journals quality signals using previous publication track record of authors. We explore the difference in the quality signals sent by regional journals. Traditional, journal-level, bibliometric measures are contrasted with generalised measures of authors' publishing records. We used a set of 50,477 articles and reviews in 83 regional journals in Physics and Astronomy (2014-2019) to extract and process data on 73 866 authors and their additional 329,245 publications in other Scopus-indexed journals. We found that traditional journal-level measures (such as journal quartile, CiteScore percentile, Scimago Journal Rank) tend to under-evaluate journal quality, thus contributing to an image of low-quality research venues. Author-level measures (including the share of papers in the Nature Index journals) send positive signals of journal quality and allow us to subdivide regional journals by their publishing strategies. These results suggest that research evaluation policies might consider attributing greater weight to regional journals, not only for the training purposes of doctoral students but also for gaining international visibility and impact.

Indexed as

Journal qualityRegional journalResearch impactResearch policySignalling theory

Identifiers

PMID37228829
PMCPMC10182839

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.