IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pbio00/1001675.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Assessment of Science: The Relative Merits of Post-Publication Review, the Impact Factor, and the Number of Citations

Author

Listed:
  • Adam Eyre-Walker
  • Nina Stoletzki

Abstract

: Because both subjective post-publication review and the number of citations are highly error prone and biased measures of merit of scientific papers, journal-based metrics may be a better surrogate. The assessment of scientific publications is an integral part of the scientific process. Here we investigate three methods of assessing the merit of a scientific paper: subjective post-publication peer review, the number of citations gained by a paper, and the impact factor of the journal in which the article was published. We investigate these methods using two datasets in which subjective post-publication assessments of scientific publications have been made by experts. We find that there are moderate, but statistically significant, correlations between assessor scores, when two assessors have rated the same paper, and between assessor score and the number of citations a paper accrues. However, we show that assessor score depends strongly on the journal in which the paper is published, and that assessors tend to over-rate papers published in journals with high impact factors. If we control for this bias, we find that the correlation between assessor scores and between assessor score and the number of citations is weak, suggesting that scientists have little ability to judge either the intrinsic merit of a paper or its likely impact. We also show that the number of citations a paper receives is an extremely error-prone measure of scientific merit. Finally, we argue that the impact factor is likely to be a poor measure of merit, since it depends on subjective assessment. We conclude that the three measures of scientific merit considered here are poor; in particular subjective assessments are an error-prone, biased, and expensive method by which to assess merit. We argue that the impact factor may be the most satisfactory of the methods we have considered, since it is a form of pre-publication review. However, we emphasise that it is likely to be a very error-prone measure of merit that is qualitative, not quantitative.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Eyre-Walker & Nina Stoletzki, 2013. "The Assessment of Science: The Relative Merits of Post-Publication Review, the Impact Factor, and the Number of Citations," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-8, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:1001675
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001675
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001675
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001675&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001675?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerhard Knothe, 2006. "Comparative citation analysis of duplicate or highly related publications," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(13), pages 1830-1839, November.
    2. Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2010. "The impact factor's Matthew Effect: A natural experiment in bibliometrics," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(2), pages 424-427, February.
    3. Johan Bollen & Herbert Van de Sompel & Aric Hagberg & Ryan Chute, 2009. "A Principal Component Analysis of 39 Scientific Impact Measures," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(6), pages 1-11, June.
    4. Per O. Seglen, 1994. "Causal relationship between article citedness and journal impact," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 45(1), pages 1-11, January.
    5. Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2010. "The impact factor's Matthew Effect: A natural experiment in bibliometrics," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(2), pages 424-427, February.
    6. Gianmarco Paris & Giulio De Leo & Paolo Menozzi & Marino Gatto, 1998. "Region-based citation bias in science," Nature, Nature, vol. 396(6708), pages 210-210, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bertocchi, Graziella & Gambardella, Alfonso & Jappelli, Tullio & Nappi, Carmela A. & Peracchi, Franco, 2015. "Bibliometric evaluation vs. informed peer review: Evidence from Italy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 451-466.
    2. Alberto Anfossi & Alberto Ciolfi & Filippo Costa & Giorgio Parisi & Sergio Benedetto, 2016. "Large-scale assessment of research outputs through a weighted combination of bibliometric indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(2), pages 671-683, May.
    3. Weixi Xie & Pengfei Jia & Guangyao Zhang & Xianwen Wang, 2024. "Are reviewer scores consistent with citations?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(8), pages 4721-4740, August.
    4. Svetla Baykoucheva, 2019. "Eugene Garfield’s Ideas and Legacy and Their Impact on the Culture of Research," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-12, June.
    5. Mingyang Wang & Shijia Jiao & Kah-Hin Chai & Guangsheng Chen, 2019. "Building journal’s long-term impact: using indicators detected from the sustained active articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 261-283, October.
    6. Lourens H Swanepoel & Corrie M Swanepoel & Peter R Brown & Seth J Eiseb & Steven M Goodman & Mark Keith & Frikkie Kirsten & Herwig Leirs & Themb’alilahlwa A M Mahlaba & Rhodes H Makundi & Phanuel Male, 2017. "A systematic review of rodent pest research in Afro-Malagasy small-holder farming systems: Are we asking the right questions?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-20, March.
    7. Johann Brunner, 2013. "Finanzierungsmodelle der Universitäten aus volkswirtschaftlicher Sicht," Economics working papers 2013-27, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    8. Mojisola Erdt & Aarthy Nagarajan & Sei-Ching Joanna Sin & Yin-Leng Theng, 2016. "Altmetrics: an analysis of the state-of-the-art in measuring research impact on social media," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1117-1166, November.
    9. Bianchi, Federico & García-Costa, Daniel & Grimaldo, Francisco & Squazzoni, Flaminio, 2022. "Measuring the effect of reviewers on manuscript change: A study on a sample of submissions to Royal Society journals (2006–2017)," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3).
    10. Dag W. Aksnes & Liv Langfeldt & Paul Wouters, 2019. "Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, February.
    11. Bernhard Knapp & Rémi Bardenet & Miguel O Bernabeu & Rafel Bordas & Maria Bruna & Ben Calderhead & Jonathan Cooper & Alexander G Fletcher & Derek Groen & Bram Kuijper & Joanna Lewis & Greg McInerny & , 2015. "Ten Simple Rules for a Successful Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-7, April.
    12. Kenneth Zahringer & Christos Kolympiris & Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes, 2017. "Academic knowledge quality differentials and the quality of firm innovation," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 26(5), pages 821-844.
    13. Abderahman Rejeb & John G. Keogh & Wayne Martindale & Damion Dooley & Edward Smart & Steven Simske & Samuel Fosso Wamba & John G. Breslin & Kosala Yapa Bandara & Subhasis Thakur & Kelly Liu & Bridgett, 2022. "Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in the Semantic Web and Interoperability," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-32, May.
    14. Groen-Xu, Moqi & Bös, Gregor & Teixeira, Pedro A. & Voigt, Thomas & Knapp, Bernhard, 2023. "Short-term incentives of research evaluations: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    15. Emre Özel, 2024. "What is Gender Bias in Grant Peer review?," Working Papers halshs-03862027, HAL.
    16. Donna K Ginther & Jodi Basner & Unni Jensen & Joshua Schnell & Raynard Kington & Walter T Schaffer, 2018. "Publications as predictors of racial and ethnic differences in NIH research awards," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(11), pages 1-24, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jerome K. Vanclay, 2012. "Impact factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 211-238, August.
    2. Xu, Fang & Ou, Guiyan & Ma, Tingcan & Wang, Xianwen, 2021. "The consistency of impact of preprints and their journal publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2).
    3. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin & Mutz, Rüdiger, 2020. "Should citations be field-normalized in evaluative bibliometrics? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    4. Michael McAleer & Judit Olah & Jozsef Popp, 2018. "Pros and Cons of the Impact Factor in a Rapidly Changing Digital World," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 18-014/III, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, 2021. "The Matthew effect impacts science and academic publishing by preferentially amplifying citations, metrics and status," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 5373-5377, June.
    6. Drivas, Kyriakos & Kremmydas, Dimitris, 2020. "The Matthew effect of a journal's ranking," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(4).
    7. Groen-Xu, Moqi & Bös, Gregor & Teixeira, Pedro A. & Voigt, Thomas & Knapp, Bernhard, 2023. "Short-term incentives of research evaluations: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    8. Peter Sjögårde & Fereshteh Didegah, 2022. "The association between topic growth and citation impact of research publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1903-1921, April.
    9. Dell'Anno, Roberto & Caferra, Rocco & Morone, Andrea, 2020. "A “Trojan Horse” in the peer-review process of fee-charging economic journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).
    10. Matthias Aistleitner & Jakob Kapeller & Stefan Steinerberger, 2018. "Citation Patterns in Economics and Beyond," Working Papers Series 85, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    11. Jesús de Frutos-Belizón & Fernando Martín-Alcázar & Gonzalo Sánchez-Gardey, 2021. "The research–practice gap in the field of HRM: a qualitative study from the academic side of the gap," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 15(6), pages 1465-1515, August.
    12. Lanu Kim & Jason H. Portenoy & Jevin D. West & Katherine W. Stovel, 2020. "Scientific journals still matter in the era of academic search engines and preprint archives," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(10), pages 1218-1226, October.
    13. Vanclay, Jerome K., 2013. "Factors affecting citation rates in environmental science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 265-271.
    14. Liao, Chien Hsiang, 2021. "The Matthew effect and the halo effect in research funding," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    15. Abdelghani Maddi & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2018. "Comportements de collaboration homme-femme et visibilité scientifique en économie et en gestion," CEPN Working Papers hal-01922263, HAL.
    16. Estelle Dumas-Mallet & André Garenne & Thomas Boraud & François Gonon, 2020. "Does newspapers coverage influence the citations count of scientific publications? An analysis of biomedical studies," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 413-427, April.
    17. Tobias Kiesslich & Marlena Beyreis & Georg Zimmermann & Andreas Traweger, 2021. "Citation inequality and the Journal Impact Factor: median, mean, (does it) matter?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1249-1269, February.
    18. Abdelghani Maddi & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2018. "Comportements de collaboration homme-femme et visibilité scientifique en économie et en gestion," CEPN Working Papers 2018-06, Centre d'Economie de l'Université de Paris Nord.
    19. Bornmann, Lutz, 2019. "Does the normalized citation impact of universities profit from certain properties of their published documents – such as the number of authors and the impact factor of the publishing journals? A mult," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 170-184.
    20. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:1001675. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosbiology (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.