Pinto Ângelo Parise, Mejdalani Gabriel, Mounce Ross, Silveira Luís Fábio, Marinoni Luciane, Rafael José Albertino
Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, PO Box 19020, 81531-980, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.
Departamento de Entomologia, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
R Soc Open Sci. 2021 Feb 10;8(2):201617. doi: 10.1098/rsos.201617.
Taxonomy is essential to biological sciences and the priority field in face of the biodiversity crisis. The industry of scientific publications has made extensive promotion and display of bibliometric indexes, resulting in side effects such as the Journal Impact Factor™ (JIF) mania. Inadequacies of the widely used indexes to assess taxonomic publications are among the impediments for the progress of this field. Based on an unusually high proportion of self-citations, the mega-journal , focused on zoological taxonomy, was suppressed from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR, Clarivate™). A prompt reaction from the scientific community against this decision took place exposing myths and misuses of bibliometrics. Our goal is to shed light on the impact of misuse of bibliometrics to the production in taxonomy. We explored JCR's metrics for 2010-2018 of 123 zoological journals publishing taxonomic studies. , with around 15 000 citations, received 311% more citations than the second most cited journal, and shows higher levels of self-citations than similar journals. We consider 's scope and the fact that it is a mega-journal are insufficient to explain its high level of self-citation. Instead, this result is related to the ' phenomenon', a sociological bias that includes visibility and potentially harmful misconceptions that portray the journal as the only one that publishes taxonomic studies. Menaces to taxonomy come from many sources and the low bibliometric indexes, including JIF, are only one factor among a range of threats. Instead of being focused on statistically illiterate journal metrics endorsing the villainy of policies imposed by profit-motivated companies, taxonomists should be engaged with renewed strength in actions directly connected to the promotion and practice of this science without regard for citation analysis.
分类学对于生物科学至关重要，是面对生物多样性危机时的优先领域。科学出版行业对文献计量指标进行了广泛的推广和展示，导致了诸如期刊影响因子（JIF）狂热等副作用。广泛使用的评估分类学出版物的指标存在不足，这是该领域发展的障碍之一。基于异常高的自引率，这本专注于动物分类学的大型期刊被排除在《期刊引证报告》（JCR，科睿唯安™）之外。科学界对这一决定迅速做出反应，揭露了文献计量学的神话和滥用情况。我们的目标是揭示文献计量学滥用对分类学产出的影响。我们探讨了2010 - 2018年123种发表分类学研究的动物学期刊的JCR指标。[具体期刊名称]收到了约15000次引用，比被引次数第二多的期刊多311%，并且其自引水平高于同类期刊。我们认为[具体期刊名称]的范围及其作为大型期刊的事实不足以解释其高自引水平。相反，这一结果与“[具体期刊名称]现象”有关，这是一种社会学偏差，包括知名度以及将该期刊描绘为唯一发表分类学研究的期刊的潜在有害误解。分类学面临的威胁来自多个方面，低文献计量指标，包括JIF，只是一系列威胁中的一个因素。分类学家不应专注于那些对受利润驱动的公司所推行政策的恶行予以认可的、缺乏统计学素养的期刊指标，而应重新积极投身于与这门科学的推广和实践直接相关的行动中，而不考虑引文分析。
