{"id":"b76afabc-e869-4d8f-80ea-e09cdd5fa137","slug":"comparative-metrics-of-neurosurgical-scientific-journals-what-do-they-mean-to-readers","title":"Comparative metrics of neurosurgical scientific journals: What do they mean to readers?","authors":["James I. Ausman","Nancy Epstein","James L. West"],"abstract":"Background: In regard to scientific information, are we effectively reaching the universe of physicians in the 21st century, all of whom have different backgrounds, practice environments, educational experiences, and varying degrees of research knowledge? Methods: A comparison of the top nine neurosurgery journals based on various popular citation indices and also on the digital metric, Readers (Users)/month, was compiled from available metrics and from internet sources. Results: Major differences in the ranking of the Readers (Users)/month metrics compared to ranking of the various citation indices were found. It is obvious that the citation indices do not measure the number of readers of a publication. Which metric should be used in judging the value of a scientific paper? The answer to that question relates to what the interest of the reader has in the scientific information. It appears that the academic scientist may have a different reason for reading a scientific publication than a physician caring for a patient. Conclusions: There needs to be more than one type of metric that measures the value and “Impact” of a scientific paper based on how physicians learn. Wikipedia states, “The history of scientific journals dates from 1665, when the French Journal des sçavans and the English Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society first began systematically publishing research results. Over a thousand, mostly ephemeral, journals were founded in the 18th century, and the number has increased rapidly since then.”[ 16 ] “Prior to mid-20th century, peer review was not always necessary, but gradually, it became essentially compulsory.”[ 16 ] Scientific articles allow researchers to keep up to date with the developments in their fields, better allowing them to direct their own research.[ 16 ] In medicine, scientific papers have been used to communicate clinical observations that often provide the basis for future scientific work; “An essential part of a scientific article is citation of earlier work.”[ 16 ] From a paper written in 1990, “The number of scholarly journals in all fields (scientific and others) has risen from 70,000 to 108,590 over the past 20 years, according to the Bowker/ Ulrich’s database”…[ 10 ] “Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) database covers only the top science and social science journals – some 4,500 out of nearly 74,000 scientific titles are listed in Bowker/Ulrich’s database, a commercial listing of all periodicals; the average member of the Association of Research Libraries, in 1990, holds only about 27,000 titles, about 26% of the total available (published).”[ 10 ] Scientific papers are usually published by private publishing companies, which charge a fee for either a subscription to a journal or to obtain single papers. The scientific content is critically reviewed by reviewers, picked by the sponsoring organization or society. Based on those reviews, manuscripts are either accepted, revised, or rejected. The publishing houses provide the electronic systems for coordinating the Peer Review process and the mechanisms for publishing scientific papers. These publishers receive revenues for those services. In addition, the sponsoring societies or organizations also receive revenues from the publication of the manuscripts as part of the subscription prices and advertising sold.[ 5 ] In the past, access to scientific articles was only possible for those who bought subscriptions to a journal or whose university, hospital, or medical center purchased the subscriptions for their associated physicians to use. Notably, others, who did not have this access, were prevented from reading these scientific papers unless they subscribed to the journals, which was costly to the reader. The more journals that a physician reads the higher the subscription costs, thus potentially limiting the number of journals a private user could read. The establishment of internet-based scientific journals allowed “Open (Free) Access” to all internet-based journals to everyone, everywhere, at no cost. With the internet, and Open (Free) Access publishing more journal information became universally available. “Open Access” publishing has since flourished in the interim. Although it has taken many different forms, the predominant financial impact has been to shift costs from the readers, (from personal, institutional, or organizational subscriptions), to the authors for publishing their papers.[ 3 ] Open Access publishing reduced or eliminated subscription revenues and also allowed rapid online publication of scientific papers rather than a delayed print publication process.[ 3 ] Notably, about 50% of scientific manuscripts are now published “Open Access” and “are freely available within a year or two of publication.”[ 12 ] Approximately 12% of the papers are freely available immediately on publication and another 32% after a 6–12 months delay. Sixty-one percent of biomedical research papers were freely available in some form.[ 12 ] The author costs to publish in open access journals range from 100 to 1000 of dollars.[ 3 ] The lower authors’ fees are used to cover the technical costs of publishing in the internet published journals. Alternatively, in this transitional period, some of the higher fees charged by publishing houses are still returned to support the parent organizations (publishing houses and trade medical/surgical organizations). In the push to make the scientific literature Open Access, small scientific societies feared that they could suffer damage from loss of publishing revenues. Many rely on subscription revenue from their journals to fund other activities. The big commercial publishers have the larger size and profits to absorb financial losses in some of their journals, while the societies who publish a small number of journals may suffer a significant loss in revenue to Open Access publishing.[ 5 ] If the research performed comes from public funds through a government grant, the NIH believes that this information should be freely available to readers everywhere within 12 months of publication. The NIH Public Access Policy implements Division F. Section 217 of PL 111-8 (Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009). The law states: “The Director of the “NIH” shall require in the current fiscal year and thereafter that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, that the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.” The shift to internet open access publishing allowed more space to publish material than previously available in printed journals and represented competition to regular publishing houses in making more space available for communication of scientific information, at no additional cost for publication on the internet. To ease the financial burden of the loss of revenue on the publishers, a transitional plan to “Open Access” by 2024 was devised. “Plan S, due to begin in 2021, requires researchers funded by participating agencies to ensure that their papers are free to read on publication. To ease the transition, the plan allows authors to publish in a ’hybrid’ journal, with a mix of free and pay-walled content, but only if the publisher commits to shifting the journal to entirely open access by 2024.”[ 4 ] The demand for free access to scientific papers funded by government sources, thus, threatened to reduce the revenues of publishing houses and their very existence. Furthermore, large publishing houses continue to raise their charges to the major customers: universities, hospital systems, or National Governmental organizations that desire access to the large number of journals which these publishing houses control. “Universities fear they could end up paying more to help their scientists publish their work than they do now for bulk subscriptions from the publishers.” Large journal users such as universities or hospitals, would not only be paying bulk subscription costs to access the number of journals they buy for their readers but also the added author costs for publication of scientific papers.[ 3 ] “In some instances, NIH research grants are used to cover these publication costs.” “A consortium of Norway’s major research institutions … canceled all subscriptions with publishing giant Elsevier, joining a global push for immediate free access to scientific journal articles… … German and Swedish institutions, and the University of California cancelled its library subscriptions with Elsevier,” as reported in Science: 363:1255, 2019.[ 11 , 13 ] This issue has had some temporary solutions, but the final resolution of this conflict has yet to be achieved. Open Access publishing continues to grow. Indexing systems were developed to relate the number of cited published papers over a defined time period to the total number of papers published by the journal in that same period. This figure was known as the “Citation Index.” These indices were used as a measure of the importance of a paper and of the journals in which those papers were published. However, these indices did not measure the number of readers of a paper. With the internet, the actual number of readers of a journal and the number of times an individual paper is read can be measured electronically. It appears that the “Citation Index” is no longer the sole determinant of a paper’s quality or impact. Rather, other measures are needed and already exist that also reflect interest in a publication, for example, the number of readers who read or download a paper. The citation indices were used (a) to assess the number of times a paper was cited, but were also used and (b) in academic credentialing for promotion in academic ranks based in large part by the number and impact of scientific articles published. In addition, (c) public funding bodies often require the results of scientific research to be published in scientific journals that have high citation indices.[ 16 ] In the paper by Hamilton form 1990, he states, “Citations, according to the conventional wisdom, are the glue that binds a research paper to the body of knowledge in a particular field and a measure of the paper’s importance. So what fraction of the world’s vast scientific literature is cited at least once?”…[ 10 ] Statistics compiled by the Philadelphia- based ISI indicate that 55% of the papers published between 1981 and 1985 in journals indexed by the institute received no citations at all in the 5 years after they were published. The figure was derived by ISI analyst David Pendlebury, who at the request of the journal, Science, searched ISI’s extensive database of scientific citations.…[ 10 ] The conventional wisdom in the field is that 10% of the journals get 90% of the citations… “These are the journals that get read, cited, and have an impact.”[ 10 ] “To critics of the academic promotion system like the University of Michigan President James Duderstadt, the growing number of journals and the high number of uncited articles simply confirm their suspicion that academic culture encourages spurious publication” Duderstadt stated, “It is pretty strong evidence of how fragmented scientific work has become, and … the kinds of pressures which drive people to stress the number of publications rather than quality of publications.” Duderstadt said that most of that pressure is rooted in the struggle for grants and promotions. “The obvious interpretation is that the “Publish or Perish” syndrome is still operating in force,” said David Helfand, chairman of the Astronomy Department at Columbia University.[ 10 ] The research scientist looks for papers that are related to his/ her research interests and will use those papers in his/her scientific reporting. The clinician-scientist looks at articles for information that will affect his/her practice but that he or she may not necessarily use in publishing a paper. Does that distinction make any article less important or have less “impact?” What, therefore, is the proper metric to be used to evaluate a manuscript’s value to the reader? And does the grading system bias the selection against articles considered less important to bolster the journal’s perceived citation grade? Should scholarly productivity for clinicians be measured using similar strategies as are used in basic science research or the life sciences? In other disciplines, “research for research’s sake” is acceptable, but in medicine, research should always have the end goal of patient care and translation to the bedside. This paper compares the metrics of the different citation indices with the data of Readers(Users)/Month as another measure of readership. Who reads medical journals and Why? How do physicians learn? The purpose of this paper is to provide data and metrics on some of the most common neurosurgical journals that are published, so the reader can decide the relative values of each journal for his or her needs and to provide a focus on the system of evaluation of scientific publications.","thumbnailUrl":"https://sni-digital-videos.s3.amazonaws.com/articles/b76afabc-e869-4d8f-80ea-e09cdd5fa137/featured/hero-cropped-1781563356664.jpg","publishDate":"2020-06-27T00:00:00.000Z","doi":"10.25259/SNI_199_2020","categories":["Socio-Economics, Politics, and Medicine","Original Article"],"fullTextUrl":"https://surgicalneurologyint.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/10110/SNI-11-169.pdf"}