Jones A W
Department of Forensic Toxicology, University Hospital, Linköping, Sweden.
Alcohol Alcohol. 1999 Jan-Feb;34(1):25-34. doi: 10.1093/alcalc/34.1.25.
This article concerns the question of journal impact factor and other bibliometric indicators made available by the Institute for Scientific Information in their Journal Citation Report for 1996. The impact factors of journals within the subject category 'substance abuse' are listed along with total citations, immediacy indices, and cited half-lives. The relationship between cited and citing journals is discussed with the main focus on the data available for Alcohol and Alcoholism. Some of the problems and limitations of bibliometric measures of productivity are dealt with, especially when these are used to evaluate the work of individual scientists. Although bibliometric measures are easy to compute, they become difficult to interpret, such as when dealing with collaborative research and the problem posed by multiple authorship. The need to adjust impact factors and citation counts for the number of co-authors in a paper becomes important when credit has to be attributed to one individual from a multi-author paper. This is often necessary in connection with grant applications and when making decisions about academic promotion and tenure. The impact factor of Alcohol and Alcoholism has increased steadily over the past 5 years, even after adjusting for the number of self-citations, which resulted in an even greater increase in impact. However, the impact factors of substance abuse journals are generally low, compared with disciplines such as immunology, genetics, and biochemistry. Some suggestions are made for increasing the impact factors of substance abuse journals if this is considered necessary. But instead of paying attention to the impact factor of a journal, scientists should give more consideration to the speed and efficiency of the editorial handling of their manuscripts and particularly to the quality and timeliness of the peer review.
本文关注科学信息研究所《1996年期刊引证报告》中提供的期刊影响因子及其他文献计量指标问题。列出了“药物滥用”主题类别内各期刊的影响因子，以及总被引频次、即年指标和被引半衰期。讨论了被引期刊与引用期刊之间的关系，主要聚焦于《酒精与酒精中毒》的现有数据。论述了文献计量生产力指标的一些问题和局限性，尤其是在用于评估个别科学家的工作时。尽管文献计量指标易于计算，但却难以解读，比如在处理合作研究和多作者带来的问题时。当需要从一篇多作者论文中确定某位作者的贡献时，根据论文共同作者数量调整影响因子和被引频次就显得尤为重要。这在申请科研基金以及做出学术晋升和终身教职决策时常常是必要的。即使在扣除自引次数后进行调整，《酒精与酒精中毒》的影响因子在过去5年里仍稳步上升，调整后影响因子增幅更大。然而，与免疫学、遗传学和生物化学等学科相比，药物滥用领域期刊的影响因子普遍较低。如果认为有必要，文中针对提高药物滥用领域期刊的影响因子提出了一些建议。但科学家不应只关注期刊的影响因子，而应更多地考虑稿件编辑处理的速度和效率，特别是同行评审的质量和及时性。
