The Impact Factor in non-English-speaking countries

The representativeness of the ISI-Thomson Impact Factor rankings and the existing relationship between countries’ national languages and the diffusion of scientific publications is analyzed. We discuss literature on the Impact Factor related to language use, publication strategies for authors and editors from non-English-speaking countries, the effects of the inclusion of a new journal in the ISI-Thomson databases and the scientific policies articulated in some non-English-speaking countries. The adoption of the Impact Factor as the valuation criterion for scientific activities has favoured the consolidation of English language journals in the diffusion of scientific knowledge. The vernacular languages only conserve part of their importance in certain disciplines, such as Clinical Medicine or Social Sciences and Humanities. The Impact Factor, invented over 50 years ago now, could be a limitation for non-English authors and scientific journals, and does not consider some widely used practices among the scientific community concerning the development of Internet as a means for the diffusion of knowledge.

[1]  F. Gannon,et al.  Language barriers , 2008, EMBO reports.

[2]  R. Benavent,et al.  ¿Tenemos lo que merecemos? Análisis de las citas españolas en la revista PsiquIatrÍa BiolÓgica (1994-1999) , 2000 .

[3]  Amber E. Budden,et al.  The Influence of Author Gender, National Language and Number of Authors on Citation Rate in Ecology , 2009 .

[4]  Wolfgang G. Stock,et al.  Impact and relevance of LIS journals: A scientometric analysis of international and German-language LIS journals - Citation analysis versus reader survey , 2004, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[5]  Daniel Torres-Salinas,et al.  Google scholar citations y la emergencia de nuevos actores en la evaluación de la investigación , 2012 .

[6]  J. Tucker,et al.  An Empirical Analysis of Overlap Publication in Chinese Language and English Research Manuscripts , 2011, PloS one.

[7]  Shuhua Wang,et al.  Bibliometric analysis of English-language academic journals of China and their internationalization , 2007, Scientometrics.

[8]  María Bordons,et al.  Towards a single language in science? A Spanish view , 2004 .

[9]  E. Fernández,et al.  Contamos contigo: ¿Contamos también con tus citas? , 2002 .

[10]  J. Koricheva,et al.  Does Scientific Collaboration Increase the Impact of Ecological Articles? , 2005 .

[11]  G Williams,et al.  Misleading, unscientific, and unjust: the United Kingdom's research assessment exercise , 1998, BMJ.

[12]  Michael M Bornstein,et al.  Lost in translation: the impact of publication language on citation frequency in the scientific dental literature. , 2011, Swiss medical weekly.

[13]  [Citation characteristics of German authors in "Der Chirurg": hegemony of the impact factor]. , 2010, Der Chirurg; Zeitschrift fur alle Gebiete der operativen Medizen.

[14]  Emilio Delgado López-Cózar,et al.  El fraude en la ciencia : reflexiones a partir del caso Hwang , 2007 .

[15]  H G Schweim,et al.  [Citation rates of medical German-language journals in English-language papers - do they correlate with the Impact Factor, and who cites?]. , 2002, Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift.

[16]  Rodolfo L. Bracho-Riquelme,et al.  The change from French to English and its effect upon the impact factor and ranking of the Pasteur journals , 1999, J. Inf. Sci..

[17]  A. Packer,et al.  Articles by Latin American Authors in Prestigious Journals Have Fewer Citations , 2008, PloS one.

[18]  B. Édouard.  Who Cites Non–English-Language Pharmaceutical Articles? , 2009, The Annals of pharmacotherapy.

[19]  Henk F. Moed,et al.  The effect of 'Open Access' upon citation impact: An analysis of ArXiv's Condensed Matter Section , 2006, ArXiv.

[20]  Zitierverhalten deutscher Autoren in „Der Chirurg“ , 2009, Der Chirurg.

[21]  K. Filion,et al.  Factors related to the frequency of citation of epidemiologic publications , 2008, Epidemiologic perspectives & innovations : EP+I.

[22]  Juan Carlos Valderrama Zurián,et al.  Literatura científica de autores españoles sobre análisis de citas y factor de impacto en Biomedicina (1981-2005) , 2008 .

[23]  G. Gensini,et al.  [The impact factor: a factor of impact or the impact of a (sole) factor? The limits of a bibliometric indicator as a candidate for an instrument to evaluate scientific production]. , 1999, Annali italiani di medicina interna : organo ufficiale della Societa italiana di medicina interna.

[24]  M. Thelwall,et al.  Google Scholar citations and Google Web-URL citations: A multi-discipline exploratory analysis , 2007 .

[25]  Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent,et al.  El factor de impacto de las revistas científicas: limitaciones e indicadores alternativos , 2007 .

[26]  Jacqueline Leta,et al.  Researchers' writing competence: a bottleneck in the publication of Latin‐American science? , 2008, EMBO reports.

[27]  J. I. Granda-Orive,et al.  Qué significa para una revista científica disponer de factor de impacto , 2005 .

[28]  Kerstin Stenius,et al.  The language barrier and institutional provincialism in science. , 2008, Drug and alcohol dependence.

[29]  A. Ghosh,et al.  The association between impact factors and language of general internal medicine journals. , 2006, Swiss medical weekly.

[30]  Ricardo Arencibia-Jorge,et al.  Comparison of SCImago journal rank indicator with journal impact factor , 2008, FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

[31]  A. Packer,et al.  Is there science beyond English? , 2007, EMBO reports.

[32]  S Yamazaki,et al.  [Internationalization of the English-language journals in Japan in life sciences]. , 1997, Nihon seirigaku zasshi. Journal of the Physiological Society of Japan.

[33]  H. Hepp,et al.  Tötet der«Impact Factor» die deutsche Sprache? , 1997 .

[34]  L. P. D. Isla,et al.  Nueva etapa editorial y nuevos proyectos , 2010 .

[35]  J. Téllez-Zenteno,et al.  Análisis del factor de impacto de las revistas científicas latinoamericanas , 2007 .

[36]  Richard Smith,et al.  Journal accused of manipulating impact factor , 1997 .

[37]  J. Aldrete.  Se definirá la controversia de publicar en español o en inglés por los méritos académicos , 2010 .

[38]  Isabel Gómez,et al.  Towards a single language in science ? , 2009 .

[39]  PHIL CLAPHAM,et al.  Publish or Perish , 2005 .

[40]  G. G. Alcaide,et al.  Análisis del proceso de internacionalización de la investigación española en ciencia y tecnología (1980-2007) , 2012 .

[41]  D. Bakewell.  Publish in English, or perish? , 1992, Nature.

[42]  A A Sandberg,et al.  The journal "impact factor": a misnamed, misleading, misused measure. , 1998, Cancer genetics and cytogenetics.

[43]  H. Schweim,et al.  Wie häufig werden deutschsprachige Medizinzeitschriften in der englischsprachigen Literatur zitiert , 2002 .