COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, 2014 Vol. 5, Nos. 3–4, 135–137, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17588928.2014.976381

Editorial Prestige versus citation volume as journal indices in cognitive neuroscience Jamie Ward School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

In recent years, alternative measures of a journal’s influence have been developed to those based on citation metrics (such as Impact Factor). This includes the Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) which is adapted from algorithms used to prioritize webpages in search engines. It is considered a measure of “prestige” insofar as it takes into account the importance of links/citations and not just their total number. Taking a sample of 38 journals from within the field of cognitive neuroscience, it is shown that SJR and Impact Factor correlate highly (r = .83) but with a few large discrepancies in rankings. This journal, Cognitive Neuroscience, fares better on the prestigebased measure than might otherwise be expected from its citation-based rank.

The reputation of a journal is one of the biggest influences in authors’ decisions about where to submit a manuscript. Reputation may come from personal experience, or the experience of others. The manner in which manuscripts are handled (efficiently, fairly) and the timeliness of publication will be factors. Increasingly, however, the decision is based on published metrics of importance and influence. There are various formal indices that attempt to quantify this, of which the Impact Factor (IF) is the most widely known. The IF is based on the number of citations in year N to articles published in years N-1 and N-2 (divided by the total number of articles published in N-1 and N-2). A less well-known index is the Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) which is calculated for all journals indexed in the Scopus database. This editorial will contrast the two, considering 2013 metrics, for a sample of journals in the field. The SJR is based on an algorithm known as Google PageRank that was designed as a way of prioritizing websites from search results (Guerrero-

Bote & Moya-Anegón, 2012). The algorithm does not simply add up the number of links into a webpage, but it weights those links by their importance. So a link from a hub in the network that is itself well-connected will count more than a link from a small hub. To translate into journal citations, a higher SJR number implies that it is being cited by other important (well-cited) journals in the field. The absolute value of this figure is not straightforward to conceptualize given the math involved. To give points of reference to this discussion, the average SJR of all journals indexed in 2013 as “neuroscience” is 1.37 and the average of all journals indexed as “psychology” is 0.82. The 2013 SJR of Cognitive Neuroscience is 2.01. Table 1 lists the 2013 Impact Factors and SJRs of a selection of 38 international journals related, broadly, to cognitive neuroscience. A direct comparison of the two measures yields a strong positive correlation (r = .836). However, the difference in ranks (IF rank —SJR rank) points to a few imbalances. There are some journals for which the citation-based IF rank is

Correspondence should be addressed to: Jamie Ward, School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 5PP, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

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WARD TABLE 1 A selection of 38 journals that publish articles on, or relating to, cognitive neuroscience. The data shows both similarities and differences between SJR and IF measures of journal influence Title

2013 IF

IF rank

SJR

SJR rank

Rank diff

Neuron Nature Neuroscience Trends in Cognitive Sciences Journal of Neuroscience Cerebral Cortex NeuroImage Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Cognitive Psychology Human Brain Mapping Learning and Memory Cognition Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Journal of Memory and Language Neuropsychologia Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience Cortex Frontiers in Human Neuroscience Cognitive Neuroscience Brain and Language Brain and Cognition Biological Psychology Social Neuroscience Memory and Cognition Consciousness and Cognition Brain Research BMC Neuroscience Experimental Brain Research Cognitive Neuropsychology Vision Research Journal of Neuropsychology Frontiers in Psychology Language and Cognitive Processes Memory Neuroscience Letters Visual Cognition Behavioral and Brain Sciences NeuroReport Perception

15.982 14.976 21.147 6.747 8.305 6.132 4.687 3.571 6.924 4.375 3.634 5.884 2.647 3.451 3.209 6.042 2.895 2.375 3.309 2.683 3.473 2.873 2.021 2.235 2.828 2.845 2.168 1.964 2.381 3.818 2.843 1.628 1.714 2.055 1.651 14.976 1.644 1.114

2 3 1 7 5 8 11 15 6 12 14 10 26 17 19 9 20 28 18 25 16 21 32 29 23 22 30 33 27 13 24 37 34 31 35 4 36 38

12.845 11.937 11.395 5.766 5.387 4.412 3.71 3.592 3.487 3.104 3.018 2.951 2.451 2.424 2.316 2.316 2.21 2.007 1.96 1.919 1.891 1.849 1.686 1.639 1.572 1.556 1.514 1.507 1.432 1.416 1.342 1.307 1.241 1.064 0.96 0.927 0.909 0.749

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 16 15 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

1 1 −2 3 0 2 4 7 −3 2 3 −2 13 3 3 −6 3 10 −1 5 −5 −1 9 5 −2 −4 3 5 −2 −17 −7 5 1 −3 0 −32 −1 0

much greater than the prestige-based SJR rank. This implies that articles in these journals are well-cited but tend to be cited by other journals of lower importance in the field (large negative rank differences in Table 1). It should, of course, be clarified that “importance” in this context is a purely statistical measure and not a value judgment. One could imagine how some specialist journals (e.g., in an applied clinical domain) would have low centrality in the network of citations despite having obvious real-world importance. Such is the nature of all these metrics. The converse situation also occurs in which some journals have lower citation rates than would otherwise be expected from their prestigebased rank (large positive rank differences in Table 1). This implies that articles in these journals

are being cited in other important journals over and above what is expected from the Impact Factor. Cognitive Neuroscience is one such journal. Of course, this is a snapshot in time and it would be important to see whether such discrepancies remain stable. It would also be important to explore how changes in a journal (e.g., the kinds of article they publish) might affect one metric more than another. The final part of the Editorial will consider highlights of articles published recently. Discussion Papers continue to be an important aspect of this journal. These papers encourage others to submit to the journal for the first time, as commentators and—hopefully—subsequently as article authors. Voss, Lucas, and Paller (2012) presented a new look at the long-standing debate

EDITORIAL

about the nature of explicit and implicit memory. They argue that many tasks (and brain circuits) presumed to be explicit may be recruiting processes relating to implicit memory. The Discussion Paper of Gotts, Chow, and Martin (2012) also tackles the issue of implicit memory but through a consideration of repetition priming. They put forward a case that the reduction in BOLD signal on repeated trials may reflect increased neural synchrony. In terms of methods published in the journal, it is noteworthy that the journal receives almost as many submissions from EEG as fMRI. One recent study examined how the position of the hands affected visually-based ERPs (event-related potentials) to objects and argued that such interference effects depend on attention, i.e., whether the object is task-relevant (Qian, AlAidroos, West, Abrams, & Pratt, 2012). Another study combined both fMRI and EEG to show that effects of recollection and familiarity are dissociable in both time (using EEG) and space (using fMRI) (Herzmann, Jin, Cordes, & Curran, 2012). It is also notable that the method of MEG, that enables good temporal and spatial resolution, is linked to two of the most highly cited papers in 2012 (Maratos, Senior, Mogg, Bradley, & Rippon, 2012; Rivolta, Palermo, Schmalzl, & Williams, 2012). Similarly, another notable trend is that the method of tDCS (transcranial Direct Current Stimulation) is becoming almost as common as TMS in studies of brain stimulation (for a recent example, see Chrysikou et al., 2013).

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REFERENCES Chrysikou, E. G., Hamilton, R. H., Coslett, H. B., Datta, A., Bikson, M., & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2013). Noninvasive transcranial direct current stimulation over the left prefrontal cortex facilitates cognitive flexibility in tool use. Cognitive Neuroscience, 4(2), 81–89. doi:10.1080/17588928.2013.768221 Gotts, S. J., Chow, C. C., & Martin, A. (2012). Repetition priming and repetition suppression: A case for enhanced efficiency through neural synchronization. Cognitive Neuroscience, 3(3–4), 227–237. doi:10.1080/17588928. 2012.670617 Guerrero-Bote, V. P., & Moya-Anegón, F. (2012). A further step forward in measuring journals’ scientific prestige: The SJR2 indicator. Journal of Informetrics, 6(4), 674–688. doi:10.1016/j.joi.2012.07.001 Herzmann, G., Jin, M., Cordes, D., & Curran, T. (2012). A within-subject ERP and fMRI investigation of orientation-specific recognition memory for pictures. Cognitive Neuroscience, 3(3–4), 174–192. doi:10.1080/ 17588928.2012.669364 Maratos, F. A., Senior, C., Mogg, K., Bradley, B. P., & Rippon, G. (2012). Early gamma-band activity as a function of threat processing in the extrastriate visual cortex. Cognitive Neuroscience, 3(1), 62–68. doi:10.1080/17588928.2011.613989 Qian, C., Al-Aidroos, N., West, G., Abrams, R. A., & Pratt, J. (2012). The visual P2 is attenuated for attended objects near the hands. Cognitive Neuroscience, 3(2), 98–104. doi:10.1080/17588928.2012.658363 Rivolta, D., Palermo, R., Schmalzl, L., & Williams, M. A. (2012). An early category-specific neural response for the perception of both places and faces. Cognitive Neuroscience, 3(1), 45–51. doi:10.1080/17588928.2011.604726 Voss, J. L., Lucas, H. D., & Paller, K. A. (2012). More than a feeling: Pervasive influences of memory without awareness of retrieval. Cognitive Neuroscience, 3(3–4), 193-207. doi:10.1080/17588928.2012.674935

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Prestige versus citation volume as journal indices in cognitive neuroscience.

In recent years, alternative measures of a journal's influence have been developed to those based on citation metrics (such as Impact Factor). This in...
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