1. Publishing for impact
Elements for a publication strategy
Wouter Gerritsma, Wageningen UR Library

2. Social science publications at Wageningen UR

4. Full screen image with title

5. How are we able to compare numbers?
 Scientist Z. Math has a publication from 2001 with 17 citations
 Scientist M. Biology has a publication from 2007 with 32 citations

6. Baselines for Mathematics

7. Baselines for Molecular Biology

8. A quantitative example
 Bouma, J, Bulte, EH, & DP van Soest (2008)
Trust, Trustworthiness and Cooperation: Social Capital
and Community Resource Management. J. Env. Ec. &
Mngmt 56(2)155-166.
● Cited 12 times
 Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
from journals menu in ESI:
● Economics & Business
 Baseline data for Economics & Business (from ESI)
● Article from 2008: Average: 3.62 Citations; Top
10%: 9 citations; Top 1% 27 citations
 RI = 12 / 3.62 = 3.31

9. Baseline data to normalize citation data?
Citations data source Baselines
Web of Science ESI or InCites
Scopus SciVal Strata
Google Scholar none
Propriatary A&I database none

10. H-index
 Balance between productivity
and citedness
 To rule out the effect of one
or two highly cited papers
 Applicable to
authors, journals, research
groups, compounds, subjects
etc…
 But there are some serious
doubts about robustness
Waltman, L. & N. J. van Eck (2011). The inconsistency of
the h-index. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology 63(2):406-415
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.21678

11. In practice

12. After excellent research,
where should you publish?

13. Where to publish?
 A valued journal?
● Quality
● Editorial board
● Acceptance rate
● Time to publication
● Journal circulation
● Visibility

14. 50% of articles generate 90% of all cites
Seglen, P. O. (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. BMJ
314(7079): 497-502. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/314/7079/497

15. Look at the IF in a different way

16. Journal quality and impact global universities

17. Highlighting Dutch Universities

18. But where is Tilburg?

19. Journal quality and article impact 2003-
2009, for Wageningen UR
Journal
Quartile Pubs RI T10(%T10) T1(%T1)
Q1 7170 2.26 2444(34%) 505(7%)
Q2 2919 1.26 578 (20%) 61 (2%)
Q3 1303 0.93 143 (11%) 10 (1%)
Q4 587 0.66 30 (5%) 6 (1%)
Aggregate 11917 1.79 3195(27%) 582(5%)
Source: Wageningen Yield, Feb. 2012

20. Document type and article impact 2003-
2009, for Wageningen UR
Document
type Pubs RI T10(%T10) T1(%T1)
Article 11212 1.62 2777(25%) 437( 4%)
Review 705 4.45 418 (59%) 145(21%)
Aggregate 11917 1.79 3195(27%) 582(5%)
Source: Wageningen Yield, Feb. 2012

21. The impact factor Matthew effect
The journal in which papers are published have a strong
influence on their citation rates, as duplicate papers
published in high-impact journals obtain, on
average, twice as many citations as their identical
counterparts published in journals with lower impact
factors..
Larivière, V. and Y. Gingras (2010). The impact factor's Matthew Effect: A
natural experiment in bibliometrics. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology 61(2): 424-427.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.21232

22. Final word on journal quality
It is better to publish one paper in a quality journal than
multiple papers in lesser journals. [...]. Try to publish in
journals that have high impact factors; chances are your
paper will have high impact, too, if accepted.
Bourne, P. E. (2005). Ten Simple Rules for Getting
Published. PLoS Computational Biology 1(5): e57.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010057

23. Networking

24. International cooperation
No Cooperation International Cooperation
University % output Impact % output Impact
EUR 16 1.13 40 2.00
RUG 23 1.07 39 1.43
RUN 20 0.94 39 1.46
TUD 33 1.24 43 1.52
TUE 29 1.50 41 1.52
UL 20 0.90 46 1.38
UM 16 0.90 42 1.48
UT 33 1.33 37 1.36
UU 21 1.54 39 1.61
UvA 20 1.15 43 1.64
UvT 25 1.15 42 1.21
VUA 18 1.15 43 1.68
WUR 21 1.12 49 1.27
Aggregate 25 1.15 44 1.53
NOWT (2008). Wetenschaps- en Technologie- Indicatoren 2008. Maastricht,
Nederlands Observatorium van Wetenschap en Technologie (NOWT).

25. Cooperation is effective
WTI2 report 2011

26. Cooperation...
Teams increasingly dominate solo authors in the
production of knowledge. Research is increasingly done in
teams across nearly all fields.
Teams typically produce more frequently cited research
than individuals do, and this advantage has been
increasing over time.
Teams now also produce the exceptionally high-impact
research, even where that distinction was once the domain
of solo authors.
Wuchty, S., B. F. Jones, et al. (2007). The increasing dominance of
teams in production of knowledge. Science 316(5827): 1036-1039.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1136099

27. Networking is important
 Start early, make use of Social Networking tools
● Facebook
● LinkedIn
● Social networks for scientists
● SSRN, Academics.edu, Researchgate

28. On social networking

29. On using social media
McKenzie and Özler (2011) The impact of economics blogs

30. Consider the Wikipedia
 For better or worse, people are guided to Wikipedia
when searching the Web for biomedical information. So
there is an increasing need for the scientific community
to engage with Wikipedia to ensure that the information
it contains is accurate and current.
Logan, D.W., M. Sandal, P.P. Gardner, M. Manske & A. Bateman
(2010). Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia. PLoS Comput Biol,
6(9): e1000941 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000941

31. Self citations and more

32. Self citations
The model [...] implies that external citations are
enhanced by self-citations, so that we have the
“chain reaction:” Larger size leads to more self-
citations, which lead to more external citations.
van Raan, A. F. J. (2008). Self-citation as an impact-reinforcing mechanism in the
science system. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology 59(10): 1631-1643.
11/28

33. More on references
Articles that cite more references are in turn
cited more themselves
Webster, G. D., P. K. Jonason, et al. (2009). Hot Topics and Popular Papers in Evolutionary
Psychology: Analyses of Title Words and Citation Counts in Evolution and Human Behavior, 1979
– 2008. Evolutionary Psychology 7(3): 348-362.
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep07348362.pdf
To be the best, cite the best
Borrowed from: Corbyn, Z. (2010). "To be the best, cite the best." Nature News, 13 October
2010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/news.2010.539 Reporting on the publication of Bornmann, L., F.
de Moya Anegón, et al. (2010). Do Scientific Advancements Lean on the Shoulders of Giants? A
Bibliometric Investigation of the Ortega Hypothesis. PLoS ONE 5(10): e13327 DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013327.

34. More articles per research project?
 Publishing more articles results in higher citation counts
if the articles provide sufficient substantive content to
other researchers.
● Beware of the ethical standards
● Bornmann looked at total citations, not to relative
impact
Bornmann, L. & H.-D. Daniel (2007). Multiple publication on a single research study:
Does it pay? The influence of number of research articles on total citation counts in
biomedicine. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology, 58(8): 1100-1107 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.20531

35. Journal selection and referencing with
multidisciplinary research
 Higher citations are linked to the citation-intensive
disciplines.
● But Larivière et al. looked at absolute citations rather that relative to the field
 Articles citing citation-intensive disciplines are more
likely to be cited by those disciplines and, hence, obtain
higher citation scores than would articles citing non-
citation-intensive disciplines.
Larivière, V. & Y. Gingras (2010). On the relationship between interdisciplinarity and scientific
impact. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(1): 126-131
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.21226

36. Consider Open Access publishing
 Be aware of your copyrights when publishing
 Golden Road
● PloS Journals, BMC, etc.
 Green Road
● Self archived copies (final author’s version)
● TU Repository, RePec, SSRN etc.
 Open Choice
● Hybrid system, author pays and library pays
● Sage model (only 10% of standard fees)

37. Is there a citation advantage for OA?
 Evidence is mounting
● There is certainly no dis-advantange
● Van Raan has started to self archive his preprints
● Publishers allow self archiving of the final peer
reviewed authors version
● Open Citation Project
 OA is important for developing countries
Evans, J.A., Reimer, J., 2009. Open access and global participation in
science. Science. 323, 1025. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1154562

38. Publish your data!
 Henneken et al. (2011) "articles with links to data result
in higher citation rates than articles without such links"
http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3618
 Piwowar et al. (2007) "Sharing detailed research data is
associated with increased citation rate
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000308
 Also relevant in the view of the latest developments
(KNAW)
 Library assists in curating datasets

39. What is in a name?

40. Who is the author of this thesis?

41. On the inside

42. On her own publication list

43. Final word of warning!
 Publishing strategies are meant to improve the impact of
good quality research. Using these techniques to
upgrade CVs or boosting research performance ratings of
research groups is a dangerous tactic.
Tijssen, R.J.W. (2003). Scoreboards of research excellence. Research
Evaluation, 12(2): 91-104; p.16 is especially relevant for Tilburg University

44. Thank you!
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