Steck Nicole, Stalder Lukas, Egger Matthias
Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Dean's office, Medical Faculty, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
F1000Res. 2020 Oct 1;9:1188. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.26579.1. eCollection 2020.
In academia, decisions on promotions are influenced by the citation impact of the works published by the candidates. The Medical Faculty of the University of Bern used a measure based on the journal impact factor (JIF) for this purpose: the JIF of the papers submitted for promotion should rank in the upper third of journals in the relevant discipline (JIF rank >0.66). The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) aims to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics in academic promotion. We examined whether the JIF rank could be replaced with the relative citation ratio (RCR), an article-level measure of citation impact developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). An RCR percentile >0.66 corresponds to the upper third of citation impact of articles from NIH-sponsored research. We examined 1525 publications submitted by 64 candidates for academic promotion at University of Bern. There was only a moderate correlation between the JIF rank and RCR percentile (Pearson correlation coefficient 0.34, 95% CI 0.29-0.38). Among the 1,199 articles (78.6%) published in journals ranking >0.66 for the JIF, less than half (509, 42.5%) were in the upper third of the RCR percentile. Conversely, among the 326 articles published in journals ranking <0.66 regarding the JIF, 72 (22.1%) ranked in the upper third of the RCR percentile. Our study demonstrates that the rank of the JIF is a bad proxy measure for the actual citation impact of individual articles. The Medical Faculty of University of Bern has signed DORA and replaced the JIF rank with the RCR percentile to assess the citation impact of papers submitted for academic promotion.
在学术界，晋升决策受到候选人发表作品的引用影响力的影响。伯尔尼大学医学院为此采用了一种基于期刊影响因子（JIF）的衡量标准：提交用于晋升的论文的JIF应排在相关学科期刊的上三分之一（JIF排名>0.66）。《旧金山科研评估宣言》（DORA）旨在消除在学术晋升中使用基于期刊的指标。我们研究了JIF排名是否可以被相对引用率（RCR）取代，RCR是美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）开发的一种文章层面的引用影响力衡量指标。RCR百分位数>0.66对应于NIH资助研究论文引用影响力的上三分之一。我们研究了伯尔尼大学64名学术晋升候选人提交的1525篇出版物。JIF排名与RCR百分位数之间仅存在中等程度的相关性（皮尔逊相关系数0.34，95%置信区间0.29 - 0.38）。在JIF排名>0.66的期刊上发表的1199篇文章（78.6%）中，不到一半（509篇，42.5%）处于RCR百分位数的上三分之一。相反，在JIF排名<0.66的期刊上发表的326篇文章中，72篇（22.1%）处于RCR百分位数的上三分之一。我们的研究表明，JIF排名并不能很好地代表个别文章的实际引用影响力。伯尔尼大学医学院已签署DORA，并采用RCR百分位数取代JIF排名来评估提交用于学术晋升的论文的引用影响力。
