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Most Cited versus Uncited Papers. What Do They Tell Us?
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research articles. This is evident from the review citation median, which remains greater than the JIF (Table 1). The article citation median is probably a better gauge to judge a journal’s impact. As one can see, almost all journals have an article citation median significantly lower than the JIF. This suggests that more than 50% of papers have citations lower than the corresponding JIF. Interestingly, the plot of article citation median versus JIF shows a linear relationship with a slope of 0.46 (Figure 2). This analysis implies that the median impact of papers is approximately half of JIF. More noticeable among the papers are those that receive an extraordinarily large number of citations during the first few years. For example, the top ten cited papers in Table 1 show an impact of greater than 100 for several journals. These large numbers of citations represent the transformative nature of research presented in these articles. Such seminal papers are published by all leading journals irrespective of their impact factor. These publications further engage many other researchers to continue the new concepts and strategies laid out in the original work and thus directly contribute to the growth of the discipline. The majority of the high-impact journals in Table 1 also contain a significant fraction of papers (as high as 5.5%) capturing no citations and thus contributing negatively to the JIF. Obviously, the scientific community was not able to notice this published work during the first two years, and hence, the papers did not get cited by their peers. One wonders what could be the reasons for such papers to go uncited during their prime years. A few possible reasons behind low cited or uncited papers are summarized here. • Ahead of its time. The disclosure of the research theme is either premature or the research theme currently is not in the mainstream. Such papers, often referred to as Sleeping Beauties, typically have a late bloom and start gathering citations in the later years. • Readability. The research is presented in such a way that the essence of the research findings is too difficult to grasp. Unless the authors make an effort to reach out to readers with a compelling argument, the readers are not likely to pay attention to the published work. • Title and graphics. The first entry point for any paper is the title of the paper. If the title is too specialized or long and boring, readers are likely to skip the paper. Similarly, graphics should be aesthetically appealing with scientifically accurate presentation of the data. • Journal selection. Given the large number of papers that are being published in any discipline, it is not unusual for a good paper to slip through. Hence, the selection of the right journal to present the latest results becomes an
hen the new journal impact factors (JIFs) are released by Clarivate Analytics in June of every year, we hear publishers and authors brag about the impact factor of the journal that they are closely associated with. We also highlighted the first impact factor (12.277) of ACS Energy Letters in our previous Editorial with a detailed analysis of citations (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett. 8b01088). Authors and others need to take into account that the impact of each paper varies (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The impact of a published paper can differ significantly from that of a journal impact factor.
The journal impact factor is an average of citations in a given year for papers published during the previous two years. It is important to remember that the JIF does not provide information on the impact of the individual papers. Only a handful of papers and reviews, those with a large fraction of the citations, often determines the JIF. Yet many administrators and some authors consider the JIF as a measure to judge the impact of a paper itself. As will be discussed in this Editorial, a significant fraction of the papers either get poorly cited or go uncited during the first two years. In order to obtain the divergence of citations within the impact factor, we collected 2017 citation data for papers published in 2015−2016 from Clarivate Analytics. The article and review citation medians, impact of top ten papers, and uncited references are compared for a few selective journals in the energy, materials, and multidisciplinary chemistry areas (Table 1). In all these journals a few papers garner a significant fraction of the citations, thus providing a lift for the overall average citations. Review articles tend to receive more citations than © 2018 American Chemical Society
Published: September 14, 2018 2134
DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.8b01443 ACS Energy Lett. 2018, 3, 2134−2135
Editorial
Cite This: ACS Energy Lett. 2018, 3, 2134−2135
ACS Energy Letters
Editorial
Table 1. 2017 Citation Analysis for Papers Published in 2015−2016a journal ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces ACS Energy Lett. ACS Nano Adv. Energy Mater. Adv. Mater. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Chem. Mater. Chem. Sci. Energy Environ. Science J. Am. Chem. Soc. Nano Energy Nano Lett. Nanoscale Nat. Chem. Nat. Energy Nat. Mater. Nat. Nanotechnol.
2015−2016 articles
citations in 2017
JIF
article citation median
review citation median
impact of top 10 papers (cites/paper)
uncited papers
7404
59 948
8.097
6
11
70.3
298 (4.0%)
173 2518 790 2140 5312 2015 1724 642 4769 1080 2429 4434 259 92 341 300
2 124 34 520 17 281 46 972 64 286 19 928 15 625 19 303 68 470 14 170 29 343 32 072 6 786 4 311 13 379 11 247
12.277 13.709 21.875 21.950 12.102 9.890 9.063 30.067 14.357 13.120 12.080 7.233 26.201 46.859 39.235 37.490
8 9 12 13 7 7 6 17 9 10 8 5 16 21 24 19
12 32 33 29 22 21 12 42 21 17 0 14 49 44 121 69
41.3 147.7 106.4 242.2 169.6 83.3 77.5 213.3 199.5 70.5 143.3 100.3 131.4 161.5 205.2 227.0
4 (2.3%) 52 (2.1%) 30 (3.8%) 24 (1.1%) 126 (2.4%) 53 (2.6%) 54 (3.1%) 2 (0.3%) 58 (1.2%) 17 (1.6%) 54 (2.2%) 246 (5.5%) 1 (0.4%) 1 (1.1%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%)
a
Source: Journal Citation Report, Clarivate Analytics.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Prashant V. Kamat: 0000-0002-2465-6819 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
Figure 2. Plot of article citation median versus journal impact factor for 2015−2016 published papers and their citations in 2017. The slope of the linear fit, which is 0.46, shows a close relationship between the two. (Source: Journal Citation Report, Clarivate Analytics.)
important criterion to gain the attention of researchers working in the same discipline. • One of a kind such that no one cares. Lastly, the research theme is so outdated or uninteresting that no one cares to follow up on and further continue this work. So, it is important for authors to take a look at their own published work and see the citation trend at the end of each year. Authors can determine their own author impact factor by tracking the citations for the papers they published during the previous two years. Along with highly cited papers the authors should try to seek answers for their lower visibility papers. Citations might increase by developing better writing skills, data presentation, and refocusing future research efforts. A proper selection of the journal based on the scope and not impact factor should be the major criterion to publish new advances in science.
Prashant V. Kamat, Editor-in-Chief, ACS Energy Letters
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, United States 2135
DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.8b01443 ACS Energy Lett. 2018, 3, 2134−2135
