The Emergence of a Citation Cartel
Cheap, effective, and nearly undetectable — editors devise citation cartels to drive up their journal’s impact factor.
The (Post) Dating Game — Assembling the Evidence
Testing the hypothesis that editors are manipulating publication dates to increase their journal’s Impact Factor.
Does Post-Dating Publication Help Journal Impact Factors?
Publishing an article online and then post-dating its “official” publication several months later may be used to game a journal’s impact factor, a scientist claims.
Size and Discipline Bias in F1000 Journal Rankings
The rankings of journals based on F1000 scores reveals a strong bias against larger journals and those with little disciplinary overlap with the biosciences.
Can We Measure the Value of Professional Editors?
eLife asserts that professional editors create more harm than good. But how do we know that? How can we know that? Or is this just an emotional argument based on anecdote and conjecture rather than fact?
Is Peer Review a Coin Toss?
When authors think peer-review is about their chances of acceptance rather than the quality of their paper, it can lead to the wrong expectations and unproductive behaviors.
Gaming the Impact Factor Puts Journal In Time-out
Attempts to game a journal’s Impact Factor can result in being de-listed from the Journal Citation Report. Most offenders learn their lesson and return to normal citation behavior.
F1000 Journal Rankings — The Map Is Not the Territory
Does the release of a journal ranking metric signal a change in vision for post-publication peer review?
Mountains Out of Molehills, and the Search for a Retraction Index
A retraction study hits some familiar conceptual problems, and a proposed retraction index runs into a deeper issue.
Is Something Fishy Going On? Citations Suggest Correction Comes Slowly, If It Comes At All
Rebuttals are cited less, don’t change citation patterns for original papers, and generally fall flat. And you thought science was self-correcting?
PLoS ONE's 2010 Impact Factor
Does the success of the scalable, multidisciplinary open access mega journal signal the imminent demise of the specialized, highly-selective subscription journal?
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Clay Shirky? Or, Silicon Valley Discovers Impact Factor
Boiling down the social Web to create a measure of influence? Not as easy as it looks.
Anticipating the 2010 Impact Factor — The Devil Is in the Details
Why predicting a journal’s Impact Factor may be more difficult than you think.
Paying for Impact: Does the Chinese Model Make Sense?
In many Chinese universities, authors are paid to publish. And the more prestigious the journal, the higher the reward.
Gaming the System: Do Promises of Citation Advantage Go Too Far?
Promises of more citations if authors pay are problematic in more ways than one.