Comments on: Impact factor trends (2012 edition)

By: Massimo

Massimo — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 13:16:00 +0000

PRL sticks to publishing the best physics across the board, in all subfields, not just the hot ones.

… and it does not publish just 200 papers a year, which makes it impossible for it to compete with journals that do, much like PRB cannot compete with PRL, IF-wise.

By: GMP

GMP — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 02:30:41 +0000

This by itself explains the high IF of Science and Nature, it is mostly arising from articles in the medical and biological fields, methink — not physics.

Yep, I agree. I have a Nature article that’s in cond mattter/materials science, and it gets about 13-14 citations per year, not 30 (as the IF would suggest). Other people tell me the same thing; sure, you can get a Nature/Science article that gets 100′s of citations per year, but in physics it’s not that common.

Take the case of nano (whatever the !@#$ it means): you have physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, chemical engineering, electrical engineering departments with researchers working on nano-related subjects.

My experience with Nano Lett (and ACS Nano) is that they publish work doesn’t really fly in PRL. Nano Lett stuff is more applied science, like cool fabrication advances or new devices. For instance, a lot of graphene transport, photonics, nanoribbon devices etc is now in Nano Lett. There is surprisingly little optoelectrinics/photonics in PRL or PRBs; they are relegated to APL/JAP it seems as too applied, but Nano Lett is not closed to this work. But you are right, it is all about nano, and nano is all the rage now, with many active people in many interdisciplinary fields. PRL sticks to publishing the best physics across the board, in all subfields, not just the hot ones.

By: Massimo

Massimo — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:25:27 +0000

Hey GMP, thank you for your comment. Indeed, they are reputable journals, NanoLetters seems to have started out high in the first place, ACS Nano gives me more the impression of constant, steady increase.
I think, though, that comparing IFs across disciplines is a tricky business, often misleading. The various disciplinary communities have different sizes, different numbers of papers are published, and as a result more citations are generated. This by itself explains the high IF of Science and Nature, it is mostly arising from articles in the medical and biological fields, methink — not physics.
Take the case of nano (whatever the !@#$ it means): you have physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, chemical engineering, electrical engineering departments with researchers working on nano-related subjects. I am curious to see what happens when the appeal of the nano fad starts waning.

By: Massimo

Massimo — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:15:10 +0000

Thank you for your comment. I am not sure I see Nature Communications as a competitor to PRX or even PRL due to its multidisciplinary character (read: physics is at the bottom of their priority list). I don’t see a lot of people going through the highly non-trivial and fairly time consuming exercise of formatting, rewording, restructuring the manuscript, for a journal that in the end it has the same impact factor as PRL. But hey, I may be wrong.

By: GMP

GMP — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:02:54 +0000

Have you checked Nano Lett and ACS Nano? They are both relatively new, both society journals (American Chemical Society), and both with high impact factors achieved in a very short time.

Starting from 2007, their impact factors have been:

Nano Lett: 9.627, 10.371, 9.991, 12.219, 13.198

ACS Nano: No IF for 2007, 5.472, 7.493, 9.865, 10.774

Near as I can tell, they specialize in publishing on hot topics that have both scientific and technological potential, and they seem to have a strong support/respect of the nanoscience community (although I don’t know what came first — the high IF or the community support). Whatever they are doing would be worth looking into.

By: Yuan

Yuan — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 04:03:14 +0000

I would like to point out that the 2011 impact factor of Nature Communications is also out. It’s 7.396 (significantly lower than Nature Physics and on par with PRL). Being a multi-disciplinary, on-line-only journal, it could be a strong competitor to PRX.

By: Camilla

Camilla — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 05:27:52 +0000

” I think that as soon as the difference between the two is 1.5 or less, they will be considered equally prestigious by most authors.”

What if the difference is 1.55. Will the 0.05 be a mark of inequality? How did you come up with 1.5 anyhow… Please don’t tell me you just made it up.