IntroductionRELIEVE, the dean of electronic Spanish journals (Rodríguez, 2005), is about to complete his first fifteen years of existence. During this time he has not stopped developing personally and growing, in all the ways that denote his quality: demand, access, citations, internationalization, number of manuscripts, etc. In previous diverse texts (Aliaga & Suárez, 2002, 2007) we have analyzed a few of these aspects. Presently, we want to analyze in detail the scientific repercussion of our magazine.
In trying to conceptualize the notion of scientific repercussion of a publication one can and one should, pay attention to the diverse and various indicators. To fundamentally organize these indicators we will utilize what is set out in one of the most comprehensive and up to date texts that exists regarding this theme, that of Delgado, Ruiz-Pérez & Jiménez-Contreras (2006). They consider that the said concept covers various factors that we will analyze with greater detail:1. Quality of the Publication We must point out in beginning that the concept of repercussion is different from others often used to analyze scientific publications, such as that of quality. Both concepts are clearly different (Bosch, López-Bescós & Vallés Belsué, 2001) and should not be confused. There may be articles of great quality, published in journals also of great quality, that are of interest fundamentally local and therefore do not produce a great impact (no more than in their own limited community). Also there are articles of lesser quality with great repercussion (keeping in mind the article regarding “cold fusion”, which provoked a great impact socially and in the mass media, besides having a great impact- measured in the number of citations received-, but in result were based on a lie and bad scientific quality). Even though a journal doesn’t have to have quality in order to have impact and vice versa, one certainly hopes that a journal (or an article, if one is attempting to analyze more detailed information) of good quality tends to have both in equal amounts in respect to its subject matter, geographic range, type of discipline, etc. in order to have major impact. We are going to primarily analyze the quality of RELIEVE. The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, FECYT, created by the Spanish Government on April, 24, 2001, is an entity dependent on the Spanish Department of Science and Innovation. The FECYT acts, according to its legal definition, as technical and administrative support to the Spanish scientific and technological policy makers in investigation and innovation material for the department of Support of Scientific and Technological Policy. Since it´s inception, the foundation has improved the coordination, tracking, evaluation and planning of the activities R&D&I. In addition, the FECYT controls for all Spanish Universities the deal with ISI databases (now officially called Thompson Reuters). The FECYT, during 2007 and part of 2008, carried out the First evaluation of the quality of Spanish academic journals (one can look at the documentation at http://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/index/recyt/resolucion). From the 275 Spanish academic journals that were part of the process, only thirty three (18%), passed the three consecutive phases of quality testing, obtaining a positive final evaluation, which gives one an idea of the difficulty of the process. The areas that had the most success where Education (with seven journals receiving positive evaluations) and the Economy (with 6 journals receiving positive evaluations). Among the seven educational journals, the one of the best quality in Spain is RELIEVE. Another journal of good quality is the Journal of Education, published by the Ministry of Education. The information in this journal is entered into the ISI-Thompson database. Other additional support of the quality of RELIEVE can be found in the international catalog Latindex (Latinamerican index of scientific publications), that have become a quality reference for Latin-American journals (as used, for example, in DICE, in RESH, in MIAR, etc.). Their directory includes more than 17,000 journals. Latindex has developed, in addition, a catalog of journals, much more restrictive, that have been evaluated according to a quality criterion that becomes more and more decerning. Only the journals that demonstrate having at least 25 of these quality criteria can be a part of this selective catalog. RELIEVE has demonstrated having 33 of them. As we are able to check in the DICE database (Spanish for Circulation and Editorial Quality of the Spanish Humanity and Social and Legal Science Journals), of the Spanish National Research Council, of the associated journals en the area of Research Methods and Diagnostics in Education (MIDE) only RELIEVE and to others reach this high level, of a total of 15 journals. Of the 165 educational journals included in DICE only 11 reach the level for measured quality by the Latindex criteria. It seems evident from this information that RELIEVE is accredited by diverse and prestigious agencies, both international and national. 2. Opinion polls among the scientific community A second criterion linked to the impact of a journal in the academic and scientific community is the opinion of professionals about the publication. In Spain there has only been a systematic research about the opinion of the university professors (that isn't all of the researchers, but it is a substantial part) respect of the quality of the journals in Social Sciences. The study was carried out by a team directed by Alcaín in 2001 and in 2002 the results were published in the areas of Educational Science, Political Science, and Sociology (Alcaín, 2002). In this study, by mistake didn't include RELIEVE in the listed journals a which it was asking the researchers about. Despite that, RELIEVE was a journal that was often times added by hand (for that reason its grade is not comparable with the rest). A number of times it was added even above journals of the standing and recognition of Infancia y Aprendizaje, the classical Spanish journal (it was also was left off the list by mistake and presently is found in the Social Science Citation Index of the ISI). In order to see the value of each of the journals in the academic community from the proceeding, we can analyze the answers give by the researchers pertaining to the MIDE 'academic area' in this study (Alcaín, 2002). Consider the ten best rated journals: Table 1 – Assessment of journals on the part of senior Spanish professors pertaining to the area of knowledge of ´Research Methods and Diagnostic in Education´
Taken from Alcain´s data (2002), ordered by the percentage of “A” answers (those that consider the journals as “Very good, an important journal for it´s subject”). The journals in cursive weren´t included in the original list. What especially stands out is that RELIEVE was, in 2002, earned sixth position among the most valued journals by the area MIDE professors in spite of not having had the same conditions in the study (it didn’t appear on the list of valued journals). It was also observed that all of the interviewees that valued RELIEVE considered it as “very good, an important journal for it's subject” or “good, interesting for it's subject”, and not one put it in the C (“of general interest”) or D (“without interest for it's subject) categories. As additional proof of the good opinion and interest that RELIEVE inspires in the scientific community we wanted to stress that the Scientific Board is, probably, that which has the largest proportion of international members from among all the Spanish educational journals. This Board works with the most respected leaders in the most important material from diverse countries like Gene Glass (former president of The American Educational Research Association and director of two important educational journals), A. Artiles, from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), S. Kemmis (from the University of Deakin, in Australia), A. Salem (University of Paris III), R. Floden (Michigan State University), David Hamilton (University of Liverpool), Nina Talyzina (Moscow State University), Felipe Martínez Rizo (Director of the National Institute of Educational Evaluation of México), among others. Among the national members of the aforementioned Scientific Board there is a broadening array of department heads and well known and respected professors from a number of Spanish universities. That all of these prestigious people have decided to associate their name with RELIEVE makes it evident that there is a generally good opinion about it. It is a source of pride for those that put it together. 3. Quantitative analysis of the demand for the journal This criterion refers to the number of subscriptions that we receive from documentation services and libraries. However, there is no way to fully quantify this. The journal that we are referring to, RELIEVE, is an Open Access electronic journal (in fact, it is the first Spanish journal of it's kind during this movement of influential growth in the scientific world). This means that any interested person can access any article published by the journal at no cost to them, when they want, and from wherever they want (with the only and simple requirement being that they have an internet connection). That way people don’t need to have intermediaries like documentation services and libraries but can still have reliable data. However, we can say that the available research (see, for example Harnard, 2006) has clearly demonstrated that providing free access to an academic publication, such as RELIEVE, increases the impact it has on citations received between 50% and 250% with respect to other equivalent journals that don’t participate in Open Access. 4. Analysis of the citations received One of the few possibilities that could approximate this type of data, in spite of limited resources, and permits us to make an analysis of the impact on some other journals (although only at the Spanish level) is INRECS (‘Impact of Spanish Social Sciences Journals’, http://ec3.ugr.es/in-recs). RELIEVE was found to be the educational journal with the fifth largest rate of impact (citations per article) in 2007. As to sustaining the tendency in the long term, it is in the first quartile of all educational journals in the data accumulated between 1994 and 2007. Keep in mind that IN-RECS doesn't count (because of their precarious means) citations received in publications that aren't Spanish which is where RELIEVE reaches its greatest impact (as 80% of access to the journal comes from outside of Spain). 5. Internet related indicators The special circumstance that RELIEVE is an electronic journal provides additional support about the impact of the articles that are published in it, depending on several factors. 5.a. Number of accesses This criterion can apply as much to the journal (as a way of evaluating its impact within the community) as, given what we found in the particular case of an electronic journal, about the articles themselves. The analysis of the accesses is a measure that has demonstrated a significant correlation with the impact of the articles, measured in number of citations. RELIEVE has two ways to count the number of accesses to it's home page. The first is a corporate account at the University of Valencia (where the journal is based) and another conducted by an external international audit firm (Motigo Webstats). Some things must be kept in mind when interpreting these facts however. The first is that not all readers who access an article enter through the home page, it is possible to go directly to the article of of interest and the visit won't be counted. Also it must be considered that the articles in RELIEVE are duplicated in other full text repositories (Redalyc, ScientificCommons, Quaderns Digitals, etc.), so that the number of readers accessing the text is, with out a doubt, much greater than is indicated by the meters installed on local servers. In spite of the aforementioned limits, RELIEVE has received more than 650,000 hits on it’s homepage since 1997 (there wasn’t a meter available during the first years of publication). This is a number that shows the enormous interest that RELIEVE inspires in the educational community. It should be noted that hits on the site are increasing at an accelerating rate, the last two years the number of visitors has exceeded 100,000 per year. As a complement to the counter of the University of Valencia, RELIEVE installed another meter from Motigo Webstats, which is easily and publically accessible from a link at the bottom of the homepage of the journal. Since that time more than 470,000 hits to the homepage of the journal have been counted. This business creates a detailed analysis of these hits, between whose details that highlight the international nature of demand. Consider the following data: Table 2 – Geographic Areas from hits to RELIEVE
Source: Motigo Webstats ( July 22th 2008) As can be seen, there is a strong international demand for RELIEVE, almost 80% of the hits on the journal come from outside of Europe. This data supports not only the major internationalization of the magazine, but also that its impact transcends boarders. 5.b. Number of links to the journal The number of links (hyperlinks) established towards a journal are a sign of the interest awakened in the community, especially in the academic community, so it can be considered a complementary measure of the impact of the publication. In RELIEVE’s case there are a lot of international academic institutions (not to enumerate nearly all of the Spanish) that have permanent links to the journal. Here are a few, though not all because we can't list them all for reasons of space: Table 3 – Examples of links to RELIEVE
To the previous examples we should add the presence of the Journal in diverse national consortiums of academic libraries. As we can see, the journal RELIEVE sparks wide-ranging interesting in a large variety of international institutions and in research centers and universities in dozens of countries. As a result, it is available in a multitude of libraries worldwide, at a much greater level than any other academic journal. As we can see, the journal RELIEVE achieves great distribution and renown on an international scale. 6. Diffusion and audience: visibility and accessibility In the words of Delgado, Ruiz-Pérez, and Jiménez-Contreras (2006), “The diffusion of a journal should be understood as its ability to be visible for the scientific community to which it is addressed. As it is a means of communication, the main purpose of a scientific journal is to transmit information” (p. 56). In this sense, and in view of the data shown earlier, it is evident that RELIEVE has a wider diffusion than the majority of academic journals published about education (see, for example, sections 3 and 5 of this document). There are various indicators we could use to determine the diffusion of an academic publication: primarily, circulation, presence in databases and libraries or newspaper libraries and visibility on the internet. Some of these indicators are not directly applicable to the publication to which we are referring, and in other cases we have already presented part of the information. We will now look at each in detail. 6.a. Circulation As RELIEVE is an electronic open-access journal, data such as print runs, subscriptions and sales, or exchanges with other journals are not applicable. Instead, the statistics regarding the quantity of visits to the journal that we have presented in section [5.a] can be used. 6.b. Presence in databases RELIEVE is included in the following data bases (almost all international), among others:
In fact, of the 165 journals linked to the educational sciences in the database DICE (‘Diffusion and Publishing Quality of Spanish Journals in the Humanities, Social Sciencies, and Law’) there are only two that are linked to more databases than RELIEVE, which is certainly notable when compared to other journals of its kind. 6.c. Presence in National and International libraries In addition to the locations listed in section 5.b, RELIEVE is found in the following associations or consortiums of libraries: · COPAC: the UK and Irish Academic and National Library catalogue · HEAL-Link - Greece · Danmarks Electronic Research Library - Denmark · California Digital Library, University of California - USA · OCUL: Ontario Council of University Libraries - Canada · OhioLINK (Ohio Library and Information Network) - USA · Stichting eIFL.net - Italy · National Library of Luxembourg - Luxembourg · Consortium of Academic Libraries of Catalonia (CBUC) - Spain · UKB - Dutch Consortium of University Libraries and National Library - Netherlands · ABM-utvikling - Norway · Swedish Library Association - Sweden · SUNCAT: UK union catalogue of serials · Open J-Gate: India · DIALNET (Spain) · REBIUN (Spain). All of this guarantees an institutional distribution unmatched by any printed journal in Spain or any other part of the world. 6.d. Internet visibility We refer back to the data already discussed in section [5.a] and would simply like to stress the link between internet visibility and the impact found by authors like King and Tenopir or Harnad (2006). 7. The journal's ability to attract quality submissions In order to show that a journal has sufficient impact on the academic community to which it is directed, the number of submissions and rate of rejection should be verified, as this will demonstrate that the journal has the ability to choose only those articles with an adequate level of quality. 7.a. Number of submissions received Given that these statistics are published jointly by the journal with others that we will mention, we will analyze this subject in the following section. 7.b. Rates of acceptance and rejection As RELIEVE periodically discloses its publishing data on its web page, we include it below to show simultaneously the two indicators classified as 7a and 7b. Table 4—Publishing statistics of the journal RELIEVE
As proven by this table, the journal's rejection rates are extraordinarily high for the realm of the social sciences and are more common for well-known journals of the natural sciences. This data shows that the journal is a means of expression that is very attractive to authors in the area of education and that it can select its articles from a wide variety of submissions. It is an excellent sign of the impact RELIEVE exerts within the academic community and of its ability to attract tremendous attention from authors. 7.c. Geographic origins of contributing authors Geographic origins are another indicator of a publication’s ability to attract submissions. According to previously published data (Aliaga & Suárez, 2007) “RELIEVE can take pride in having received (and published) articles from Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, the United States, the Republic of South Africa, Brazil, Guatemala, Holland, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Turkey, Uruguay, Portugal, Austria and Nigeria.” This data certainly speaks to a wide and varied array of international contributors, which again demonstrates the international impact of RELIEVE. ConclusionWhatever indicator we use to measure the impact of RELIEVE, we are presented with data that shows that its current impact is remarkable and characterized mainly by a wide international diffusion and its ability to attract both readers and authors as a means of communication. The inclusion of RELIEVE in a large number of high-quality databases, collections, libraries, and other user services, strongly demonstrates the impact and diffusion of the journal. We are left to study in depth this line of work so that, together with the contributions of authors, reviewers, and readers, we can attain even greater levels of quality, diffusion, and impact. ReferencesAlcain, M.D. (2002). Valoración de las Revistas Españolas De Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales: Filosofía, Geografía, Historia del Arte, Literatura Española, Ciencia Política, Ciencias de la Educación y Sociología. http://www.cindoc.csic.es/info/revsocinf.pdf. Aliaga, F. & Suárez Rodríguez, J (2002). Tendencias actuales en la edición de revistas electrónicas: nueva etapa en RELIEVE. RELIEVE, v. 8, n. 1. Consultado en http://www.uv.es/RELIEVE/v8n1/RELIEVEv8n1_0.htm el 22 de Diciembre de 2008. Aliaga, Francisco M. & Suárez-Rodríguez, Jesús M. (2007). Internacionalidad de las revistas académicas: Estudio de caso con RELIEVE. RELIEVE, v. 13, n. 1. http://www.uv.es/RELIEVE/v13n1/RELIEVEv13n1_0.htm. Consultado el 22 de Diciembre de 2008. Bosch, X., López-Bescós, L. & Vallés Belsué, F. (2001). Calidad y repercusión internacional de los estudios publicados. Dos conceptos distintos que deben promocionarse por un igual. Rev Esp Cardiol , 54: 131-132 Delgado,E., Ruiz-Pérez, R. y Jiménez-Contreras, E. (2006). La edición de revistas científicas: directrices, criterios y Modelos de Evaluación. Madrid: FECYT Harnad, S. (2006). Publish or Perish - Self-Archive to Flourish: The Green Route to Open Access. ERCIM News, 64 . Disponible en http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png. King, D.W. & Tenopir, C.(2000). Scholarly journal and digital database pricing: threat or opportunity?. En J. Mackie-Mason y W. Lougee (eds.), Bits and Bucks: Economics and Usage of Digital Collections. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Perneger, Th. (2004). Relation between online “hit counts” and subsequent citations: prospective study of research papers in the BMJ. BMJ; 329:546–7. Rodríguez Gómez, Gregorio (2005). RELIEVE cumple 10 años, pero… ¿cómo fue el primero?. RELIEVE, v. 11, n. 2. http://www.uv.es/RELIEVE/v11n2/RELIEVEv11n2_1.htm. Consultado el 22 de Diciembre de 2008.
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ARTICLE RECORD / FICHA DEL ARTÍCULO
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Reference / Referencia |
Aliaga, Francisco M. & Suárez-Rodríguez, Jesús M. (2007). The scientific impact of an academic journal: the case of RELIEVE. RELIEVE, v. 14, n. 2, 1-11. http://www.uv.es/RELIEVE/v14n2/RELIEVEv14n2_0eng.htm |
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Title / Título |
The scientific impact of an academic journal: the case of RELIEVE . [La repercusión científica de una revista académica: análisis del caso de RELIEVE] |
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Authors / Autores |
Aliaga, Francisco M. & Suárez-Rodríguez, Jesús M. |
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Translators/ Traductores |
Katie Barber & Kristina González |
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Review / Revista |
RELIEVE (Revista ELectrónica de Investigación y EValuación Educativa), v. 14, n. 2 |
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ISSN |
1134-4032 |
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Publication date / Fecha de publicación |
2008 (Reception Date: 2008 December 20; Publication Date: 2008 December 28). |
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Abstract / Resumen |
We review some indicators about scientific impact of an academic journal. Data about quality, academics opinion polls, citation, diffusion audience o attraction shows a high impact of RELIEVE. Se analizan diversos factores que determinan la repercusión científica de una revista académica. Los datos indican que tanto la calidad reconocida como las encuestas de opinión entre académicos, las demandas de información que atrae, citas que recibe, difusión, audiencia o capacidad de atracción denotan una alta repercusión de RELIEVE. |
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Keywords Descriptores |
Academic journal, impact, quality, citation, audience. Revistas académicas, impacto, calidad, citas, audiencia |
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Institution / Institución |
Universidad de Valencia (Spain) |
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Publication site / Dirección |
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Language / Idioma |
Spanish and English version (Title, abstract and keywords in English and Spanish ) |
Volumen 14, n. 2
© Copyright, RELIEVE. Reproduction and distribution of this article is authorized if the content is no modified and its origin is indicated (RELIEVE Journal, volume, number and electronic address of the document).
© Copyright, RELIEVE. Se autoriza la reproducción y distribución de este artículo siempre que no se modifique el contenido y se indique su origen (RELIEVE, volumen, número y dirección electrónica del documento).
[ ISSN: 1134-4032 ]
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[Principal] [La Revista] [Artículos publicados] [Publicar en RELIEVE] [Home Page] [ About us] [ Published Articles] [To publish in RELIEVE] |
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Revista ELectrónica de Investigación y EValuación Educativa E-Journal of Educational Research, Assessment and Evaluation
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