I Have A Research Support System - Chapter 430

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Xu Qiu also learned about the method of SCI journal division.

For a long time, there have been two broad influences on SCI journal divisions:

The first is the divisions established by ThomsonReuters, which are generally updated at the end of June each year; the second is the divisions established by the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (referred to as the Chinese Academy of Sciences divisions), which are generally updated at the end of October each year.

Both of these division methods are based on the impact factors of journals included in SCI, but the specific calculation methods and division basis are different.

Thomson Reuters publishes a Journal Citation Report (Journal Reports, referred to as JCR) every year. JCR will count the impact factors and other indexes of the SCI journals included in it, and finally divide the included journals into 176 different subject categories.

Each subject classification is divided into four areas: Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 according to the impact factor of the journal.

That is to say, the top 25% (including 25%) of the impact factor of each subject classification is divided into the Q1 area, the top 25%-50% (including 50%) is the Q2 area, and the top 50%-75% (including 75%) is the Q3 area. , And the Q4 area after 75%.

Obviously, the number of journals in Thomson Reuters divisions is evenly divided into four parts, and the number of journals in each division is equal.

The division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences refers to the division of JCR and divides the journals counted in the JCR into 13 major journals in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, astronomy, engineering technology, medicine, environmental science, agriculture and forestry science, social science, management science and comprehensive journals. class.

Then, the 13 major categories of journals are divided into 4 levels, namely 4 districts.

The standard way of writing the districts of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is 1, 2, 3, and 4 districts of Arabic numerals, but sometimes they are also written as districts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of Chinese characters.

The zoning design idea of ​​the Chinese Academy of Sciences started in early 2000, aiming to correct the domestic scientific research community’s neglect of the numerical differences of the impact factors of journals of different disciplines.

In other words, the scientific researchers at that time judged the quality of a journal, and almost only looked at the impact factor, and felt that the impact factor was high.

This is obviously not objective enough.

Because this evaluation method ignores the differences in different disciplines.

For example, the impact factors of basic disciplines such as mathematics and physics are generally low, and the impact factors of partial applications such as chemistry and engineering technology are generally high.

The purpose of zoning is to allow journals in the same field to conduct internal PK.

For example, compare chemistry journals with chemistry journals, compare physics and mathematics journals with physics and mathematics, and then decide a higher one.

As for the specific division, the official statement is:

The zoning table of the Chinese Academy of Sciences chooses academic influence as the division method. All journals in each discipline are arranged in descending order of academic influence, that is, the 3-year average impact factor (IF), which is divided into 4 districts in turn, so that “each district The sum of influence of journals is the same”.

Due to the “skewed distribution” of the 3-year IF of journals within the discipline, this makes “the number of journals in District 1 extremely small”.

In order to ensure the number of journals in Zone 1, the journals in Zone 1 take 5% of the total number of journals in the entire subject, that is, the journals with the highest average IF of 5% in three years are journals in Zone 1.

Journals in Districts 2, 3, and 4 are divided in the same way as the 3-year average IF sum.

The specific method is as follows:

1. Arrange the collection of journals in each discipline (the number is n) in descending order of the 3-year average IF, and the following calculations are based on this order.

2. The top 5% journals (5% of the total number of journals in the subject, ie 5%*n) are zone 1 journals.

3. For the remaining 95% journals, calculate the sum S of their 3-year average IF, and then find 1/3 of the sum, that is, S/3. The cumulative sum of influence of each journal in the remaining 3 districts is S/3.

4. The collection of journals in the previous step, that is, the collection of journals other than the journals in zone 1, count from the first journal, if their 3-year average IF sum S2 is equal to the sum S/3 calculated in the previous step , Then these journals are zone 2 journals; in the same way, 3 zone journals can be divided, leaving all journals as zone 4 journals, that is, S2=S3=S4=S/3.

The official statement is more complicated, and Xu Qiu directly found specific statistics:

Among the 13 categories, there are 1860 engineering journals in total, of which the number of journals in the first district is 117, the number of journals in the second district is 270, the total number of journals in the first and second districts is 387, and the number of journals in the first district is 6.29. %, the number of journals in the second district accounted for the total number of journals in the first and second districts. The total proportion of the chemistry journals are: 357 in total, 25 in the first district, 54 in the second district, 79 in the first and second district, and one The district ratio is 7.00%, and the ratio of district 2 is the total ratio of district 1 and district 2. Xu Qiu browsed the data of other major categories. Although the specific ratios between major categories and major categories are different, the overall difference is not obvious.

In general, the top 5% of journals with impact factors in each category are in the category 1, 6%-20% of the journals are in the category 2, 21%-50% of the journals are in the category 3, and the remaining journals are This category has 4 zones.

It can be roughly understood that the average level of articles published in the journals in the first district is the top 5% in the same field, which exceeds 95% of other articles in the same field. The average level of articles published in the journals in the second district is in the same field. Is the top 20%, and so on…

This division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has resulted in very few magazines in Districts 1 and 2 of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the number of journals in the Thomson Reuters Division Q1 is far more than that of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in District 1.

Therefore, some people’s articles will be counted as one zone according to the Thomson Reuters JCR journal division standard, and the second or even three zone according to the division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

However, this zoning method is very in line with the national conditions of flower growers, and can better motivate researchers to engage in scientific research and publish articles.

But it can also cause some problems.

For example, shortly after the publication of the “Journal Partition Table of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Document Information Center” in a certain year, it caused heated discussions among scientific researchers.

Most of them are complaints, some people also made a series of emoticons:

Pandaren A: “How is your scientific research this year?”

Pandaren B: “Hey, it’s not very good, so I posted three articles on the second district.”

Pandaren A: “Oh, that’s really not so good. What publications are they all?”

Pandaren B: “Nature Communications (NC), Proceedings of the Beautiful National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Science Progress (SA).”

Pandaren A: “……!!!”

Duanzi is just a paragraph. The academic level and influence of the three journals NC, PNAS and SA are self-evident.

Outside of this weird division, the “professionalism” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences division is naturally criticized. For example, Valnan University of Technology has stated that it will switch to the JCR division as the journal division standard.

Of course, the Chinese Academy of Sciences must have a certain basis for zoning in this way.

The biggest reason for the downgrade of these three journals may be the small number of comprehensive journals in the journal division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and serious file interruption.

In the past few years, there have been less than 60 comprehensive journals in the division. In principle, the division is based on the top 5% of the major disciplines. After counting, there should be 3 books in the comprehensive division 1, and the fluctuation should not exceed one.

Although SA is a sub-journal of “Science” by Gen Zheng Miaohong, it only officially had an impact factor the year before, so it was not available in the journal division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences before.

It will be officially included in the partition this year, so the question is, where to put it?

In the previous division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Comprehensive Zone 1 was the “Four King Kong”: “Nature”, “Science”, NC, and PNAS.

The emergence of SA has made it difficult for the Chinese Academy of Sciences to divide journals. Put it in one area. There are too many more than three;

Putting it in the second zone, it is similar to the NC level, and the SA impact factor in the second zone is higher than that of the PNAS in the first zone, which does not seem appropriate.

Moreover, even in the “Four King Kong” in a district, the level of reputation of “Nature” and “Science” is far surpassing PNAS and NC, and there is a gap between them.

Therefore, the division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences simply opened up the distinction this time, and only placed Top2 in one division.

Then, three similar journals were placed in the second district, plus a review journal ScienceReview “National Science Review”, a total of 4 second district journals.

In this way, the values ​​of the comprehensive categories of journals are as follows: 54 books in total, 2 books in district one, 4 books in district two, 6 books in district one and two in total, the proportion of district one is 3.70%, the proportion of district two is 7.41%, Although the total proportion of the second district is operated in this way, the proportion of journals in the first and second districts is much less than 20% in other major categories, but it is mainly to distinguish it from the Scientific Reports which is reduced to the third district.

“Science Report” is a new journal under the “Nature” publishing house. Originally, the target was NC, and it was also called “Little NC” when it was publicized.

As soon as the impact factor came out, good guys, around 5, less than half of NC, plus the fact that comprehensive journals were already small, so they were directly hit in the three districts and became one of the “water journals”.

Another possible reason for the Chinese Academy of Sciences to make such a zoning decision is that these journals collect too much page fees each year.

PNAS, it is the journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the beautiful country. Although the impact factor is not high, only about 10, it is also recognized as one of the world’s four major journals, namely “Nature”, “Science”, “Cell”, and PNAS. It is a century-old journal. Classic journals.

In the past two years, a total of 874 articles have been published in China. The page fee for PNAS non-OA (open source) is 1,640 dollars, and OA articles are 2,200 dollars. The average is 2,000 dollars. This is 1.7 million dollars, which is 11.72 million soft sister coins. .

Considering the academic reputation of PNAS in the world, this price is acceptable.

But NC and SA burn too much money.

SA, in the first two years when there was no impact factor, the number of domestic articles published on it ranked third in the world, lower than the beautiful countries and Germany, but two years after the impact factor, the number of florists’ articles jumped. Surpassed Germany.

SA is an OA journal. The page fee for each article is 4,500 dollars. Domestic scholars have published more than 300 articles in the past two years, which is 1.4 million dollars, which costs about 9.65 million soft sister coins.

The most powerful is NC, which costs $5,200 for layout.

A total of 2,000 papers have been published on NC in the past two years in China. The page fee is 5200*2000= more than 10 million US dollars, which is nearly 70 million RMB, which is still very exaggerated.

The previously mentioned “Science Report” under the “Nature” has also been reduced to the three districts.

Therefore, the division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences this time may also be a guide. The scientific research funds given by the state are not used for the editors of those journals.

In fact, it is also a kind of helplessness, UU reading www.uukanshu. In the era of peace, many established rules, especially international rules involving multilateral countries, are really difficult to change.

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PS: In reality, the downgrade of NC and PNAS occurred in 2018, and then in the second year, that is, in 2019, the division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reclassified NC, SA, and PNAS to the comprehensive category. At the same time, it also uploaded the “National Science Review produced a total of 7 comprehensive category 1 journals.

It was originally called Chinese ScienceBulletin, which is “Science Bulletin of Flower Planters”, and was later renamed ScienceBulletin, which is “Science Bulletin”. This is the only comprehensive SCI academic journal of natural sciences in our country. It was considered a district on the back door, because the impact factor was only about 6. However, the whole country promotes a journal, and many bigwigs publish articles on it, and the quality is improving year by year. The latest data in 2021, the impact factor of this journal is already 9.5, but I want to be recognized by international peers. There is still a long way to go.

PS3: Today is the beginning of the month, and it’s still Monday, so I ask for recommendation tickets, monthly tickets, and support~