[Insight-developers] Measures of Impact : Open Access Publishing

[Luis Ibanez]

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030296

    "Measures of Impact"

by: Hemai Parthasarathy

IMPACT: 1.The striking of one body against another; collision.
         2. The force or impetus transmitted by a collision.
         3. The effect or impression of one thing on another.
         4. The power of making a strong, immediate impression.

—Dictionary.com


Open-access publishing was headed on a collision course with traditional
models of scientific publishing since well before the Public Library of
Science launched its first journal. The force of that collision has seen
dramatic shifts in the publishing landscape that include increased
support from funding agencies for open-access publishing models and
institutional archiving, greater availability of free-access articles
and options from subscription-based publishers, and the launch of new
open-access journals.

PLoS Biology was launched in October 2003, less than two years ago, as
an open-access home to the very best in biological research. By any
measure, the impact of this launch was noticeable. The online
publication of our first issue was accompanied by strong and favorable
media attention to our articles. The New York Times alone covered
articles from nine of our first twelve issues. Content from these issues
was downloaded, redistributed, and reanalyzed. In 2004, PLoS Biology
articles were downloaded more than 1 million times. Because the reuse of
open-access content is allowed and encouraged, the only restriction
(aside from proper citation of the authors) is the creativity of the
user. And with the launch of the journal and the attendant excitement
about the content, manuscript submissions and presubmission enquiries
rose dramatically.

But why did anyone submit great work to a journal that didn't even exist
yet, from a publisher with no established reputation? The answer is that
it was on the strength of promises made by our in-house editors and
academic editorial board to uphold high standards and rigorous peer
review, to launch an open-access alternative to the best journals, and
to drive a transformation in scholarly publishing. On that promise, more
than 250 authors published the 30 research articles that composed our
first three issues. And it is on the basis of those first three issues
that Thompson ISI has calculated a 2004 preliminary impact factor for
PLoS Biology of 13.9.

Since even before PLoS Biology was launched (and plenty of times since
then), we've received queries from prospective authors asking about our
impact factor. However, because of the way impact factors are
calculated, it is not possible to have an impact factor until a specific
time has lapsed. Thompson ISI calculates the impact factors that it
announces this year by adding up all the citations in 2004 to articles
that appeared in a journal in 2002 and 2003, and then dividing the total
number of citations by the number of articles published by that journal
in 2002 and 2003. For a long-standing journal, therefore, this number
reflects the average number of citations over the course of a year to
articles published in the two previous years. For PLoS Biology, this
number therefore refers to citations during 2004 to articles published
in only the three months of the journal's lifetime prior to 2004, which
is why the initial impact factor can only be considered preliminary.

Of PLoS Biology's article types, Thompson ISI has chosen to define
Research Articles, Primers, and Unsolved Mysteries as potentially
citeable articles, and, hence, has divided the total number of citations
accordingly. As we did not intend the latter two categories to contain
articles that would garner citations from the publications monitored by
ISI, it does not surprise us that these articles were in fact only cited
in scholarly journals 2.4 times on average. Journal editors know that
there are various ways to deliberately improve an impact factor, for
example, by publishing topical review articles and by weighting content
towards more highly cited fields. This begs the question of whether the
editors of PLoS Biology should play the impact factor game and
discontinue some of our educational material in favor of higher
citations. On the contrary, our goal is to eventually expand and further
develop these components of PLoS Biology.

Although our magazine content is an actively evolving section of our
young journal, we consider it to be a part of the overall mission of the
Public Library of Science to make scientific publishing accessible to
more than just the research community. The eventual impact we hope to
have on education and policy far outweighs the narrow scope of impact as
defined by the impact factor. Our sister journal, PLoS Medicine, has
outstripped her older sibling in the variety of content designed to
educate and spark debate, rather than garner citations. A recently
published Policy Forum article, “Nanotechnology and the Developing
World” (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020097), which identified and ranked
the ten applications of nanotechnology most likely to benefit developing
countries, was featured in the popular media in nine languages in 22
countries, including reports by BBC and Reuters. While it remains to be
seen how an impact factor for PLoS Medicine will be calculated, what is
more exciting to us is to think about ways to measure impact more broadly.

PLoS Biology was launched to give those who believe in the goals of
open-access publishing a home for their very best biological research
papers, and to show once and for all that open-access publishing is
compatible with maintaining standards for the best science. Scientists
need to publish in journals that are highly regarded by their peers, and
the impact factor is one measure of that judgment. But there are so many
more measures of impact. Publishing as a Primer an engaging and personal
account by Frans de Waal of the relationship between primatology and
sociology (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020101) may not have helped our
citation numbers, but it will have impacted nonetheless the readers
directed to the related paper by an educational supplement in the New
York Times. In schools and colleges, educators are free to use our
content to inspire the next generation to a greater scientific literacy.
And in our technological society, scientific literacy is more important
than ever.

Comparisons are natural, but the top-tier journals that we aim to
challenge were established long before the impact factor was even a
twinkle in the eye of ISI's founder, Eugene Garfield. We hope that this
number will give those who have wished to support unrestricted
dissemination of scientific information, but who have held back for lack
of a quantitative measure of the impact of publishing in PLoS Biology,
one more incentive to submit their best work to this journal. Now is the
time to impact the future of scientific publishing for the better.