Journal Impact Versus Paper Impact
26/01/11 02:08 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Wed, 01/26/2011 - 02:08.
The speciality focus of a journal has relatively little impact on whether members of the scientific community will notice a publication. Most researchers find scientific papers of interest by queries of specialized key words in PubMed and other search engines and then directly download the papers off of the web. The name of the journal is not typically one of these search terms. The reputation of the journal, as reflected in its impact factor, may offer some extra measure of respectability for a scientific manuscript, but the hit and miss quality of peer-reviews renders this an illusion. The number of times a published paper is cited is ultimately the best measure of its real impact. Selection of open source journals and making sure the paper has a PubMed ID number are probably the best ways to ensure broad exposure of one's work.
Link to the original blog post.
The speciality focus of a journal has relatively little impact on whether members of the scientific community will notice a publication. Most researchers find scientific papers of interest by queries of specialized key words in PubMed and other search engines and then directly download the papers off of the web. The name of the journal is not typically one of these search terms. The reputation of the journal, as reflected in its impact factor, may offer some extra measure of respectability for a scientific manuscript, but the hit and miss quality of peer-reviews renders this an illusion. The number of times a published paper is cited is ultimately the best measure of its real impact. Selection of open source journals and making sure the paper has a PubMed ID number are probably the best ways to ensure broad exposure of one's work.
Link to the original blog post.