tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post5613113047015358954..comments2024-03-28T04:15:44.459-05:00Comments on nanoscale views: Where to publishDouglas Natelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13340091255404229559noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-36728347447671692842008-02-11T09:32:00.000-06:002008-02-11T09:32:00.000-06:00BTW, I also do think it is daft to compare IF of N...BTW, I also do think it is daft to compare IF of Nature and Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. It is like comparing apples and bananas. You can compare equivalent items like Science and nature but how can you compare Science and PRB or JPCM?? <BR/><BR/>It is like comparing New York Times and Financial Times. The latter one is geared to a more specialized thus much smaller audience but it does not necessarily imply that its articles are less important. They are indeed very important to the wall street bankers but they probably do not mean anything to an average citizen. Likewise, articles published in JPCM and PRB are as important to condensed matter physicists as the ones published in Nature or science but they do not mean anything to a cosmologist probably. <BR/><BR/>If impact factor is the thing to go, why don't we submit all our papers to New England Journal of Medicine which has an impact factor of 55?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-40417803854243648462008-02-11T09:22:00.000-06:002008-02-11T09:22:00.000-06:00Well, I would like to ask whether the citing journ...Well, I would like to ask whether the citing journal's quality matters or not. For instance, suppose I published a narticle in PRB. Is it the same thing to be cited 10 times by articles published in Physica E versus articles published in Nature for instance? I mean, people always proudly display the number of citations they received but nobody seems to indicate which journals those citations come from...<BR/>Another contentious issue is whether an article that received, say, 2000 citations represents a more important discovery than an article which received 200. Or is it just that the former article was in a more popular field? I mean where do we stop?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-5707125257274692232008-02-11T07:53:00.000-06:002008-02-11T07:53:00.000-06:00"How do you decide where to publish your results?"..."How do you decide where to publish your results?" is one of the questions I habitually ask physicists. (I work for Physics Today.) Doug's answer is fairly typical.<BR/><BR/>I also hear other answers. Two high-profile condensed-matter guys told me they publish in Nature and Science, in part, to help their graduate students. (Their grad students often appear as first authors.)<BR/><BR/>Two other condensed-matter guys said they stick, in principle, to journals published by APS, AIP and other non-profit associations---such is their antipathy toward the likes of Elsevier and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (the publishers of Nature).<BR/><BR/>At the end of each year, I look back at which journals yielded news stories in PT's Search and Discovery department. It's usually a three-way tie among Nature, PRL and Science. Lately, PNAS has been gaining ground.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-21161224689426056112008-02-11T07:10:00.000-06:002008-02-11T07:10:00.000-06:00I have always wondered how people make that decisi...I have always wondered how people make that decision, and I concluded that, unless the results are impressive, they will usually submit to a journal where they're frequent clients. I have seen a few papers that in my opinion do not deserve to be in such a good journal, but the author(s) are famous so they can get away with that.<BR/><BR/>Another problem is publishing multiple times in different journals. They start with the best one they can, then they do minimum modifications and submit to a lower IF one. The paper ends up in 3-4 different journals, their number of publications go up but in a ficticious way.<BR/><BR/>I also hate when they remove important data because it goes against their model. It makes me think of all the wrong results that get published because of the lack of ethics and need of publications people have.<BR/><BR/>I have friends at Rice (won't give names though) that know you one way or the other and I've heard good things about the way you do conduct your program. Nice to see how things are done from the point of view of a decent researcher.<BR/><BR/>Interesting post.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-72172158478472633722008-02-10T13:04:00.000-06:002008-02-10T13:04:00.000-06:00Gary - Thanks for that reference. Interesting wor...Gary - Thanks for that reference. Interesting work! I have written before about impact factors. The essential problem, as I see it, is that the impact factor of a journal tends to be dominated by statistical outliers. A journal with an impact factor of 19 doesn't really have every article with around 19 citations; instead many articles have far less, while a few exceptional articles have 200 citations. However, looking at the tables in your article, I wonder if the inaccuracy of impact factors is much worse in the social sciences, when typical impact factors are less than one. Is there just a certain "noise floor", where a journal with an impact factor of 0.3 is indistinguishable in practice from one with an IF of 0.5? In the physical sciences, the IFs can be much larger. The fact that Nature has IF = 22, Phys Rev Letters has IF = 9, and Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter has an IF = 2 really does mean something about readership. Even though the IF is set by outliers, articles with 200 citations are far more common in Nature than in JP:CM....<BR/>For what it's worth, I don't think there's really much difference in audience size between IF=9 (e.g., PRL) or IF=12 (e.g., Nature Materials). <BR/><BR/>earlytobed - I agree fully. PRL is the classic example. I have a colleague who sent a short paper to PRL, and it flew through the refereeing. Three referees, all said "publish as is", which almost never happens. He then put in quite a bit of effort to write up a longer, more archival article, and has had a heck of a time getting that through the refereeing at a lower impact journal. Very random.Douglas Natelsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13340091255404229559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-78291287833133549772008-02-10T10:15:00.000-06:002008-02-10T10:15:00.000-06:00I try to figure out where the paper will "find its...I try to figure out where the paper will "find its audience". I do take into account time to publication, etc.<BR/><BR/>I have another guideline. If a paper is rejected, I revise and resubmit to a *more* prestigious journal. This works for me more often than not. I think it is because there is some random component to manuscript evaluation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-17689876685821787582008-02-10T08:38:00.000-06:002008-02-10T08:38:00.000-06:00Doug: Thoughtful post. Re: your comment _ "I do tr...Doug: <BR/><BR/>Thoughtful post. <BR/><BR/>Re: your comment _ "I do try to aim for the highest "impact factor" journal that seems topical and reasonable - that's just common sense." <BR/><BR/>you might want to look at our work and the work of others in this area. See: <BR/><BR/>http://rsw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/16/6/613<BR/><BR/>An Assessment of the Predictive Validity of Impact Factor Scores: Implications for Academic Employment Decisions in Social Work <BR/><BR/>Regards, gary holdenAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com