Montserrat:

When your paper is cited, it means that your research is being used by other researchers but the Impact factor is more recognized because it indicates the quality and recognition of the journal in which it was published.

Many thanks,

Debra 

Hi Montserrat

This is a tricky one because it depends on what the purpose of the value is. For example, in the UK there is definitely a value attached academically and for research assessment purposes to the journal impact factor. The assumption is that the higher the journal impact factor, the higher quality the journal and the more rigorous the peer review process to get a paper accepted. It is certainly harder to get papers accepted for high ranking journals, but that could also be because more people are trying to get published there because of the value attached to impact factor!

On the other hand, for the individual researcher I would argue that we care most that our work is of interest to other researchers and to those beyond academia, so the numbers of people who read / download and then cite our papers may be of greater value.

what are your views on this?

best wishes Fran

Thank you, Debra. Thank you, Fran.

Being honest, my question is that it is habitual this form of comparation between collegues: if you have published in a JCR or not, and I'm tired of this classification. Many papers published in a JCR journal haven't got any citation, hence my question. The rigorous evaluation of JCR journals should be accepted, but all not classified in JCR journals are necessarily worse than the others? I do not think so. In my opinion,in  the value of a publication should be considered further evidence, in addition to the impact factor of the journal.

Best regards!

I share Montserrat's view that citation indices and journal rankings are certainly important measurements of an article's or journal's revelance - but only one possible measurement, and it has its limits. Thomas Kuhn's work - following a debate for and against method in science - showed that even natural science is some kind of a communication, complicated and rule-based, but a social contract on what is relevant science and what is not. We know from research that certian journals (especially the high ranked ones) stick to certain networks and communities which mostly tend to be defensive (an "insider" syndrom). Kaplan argued that the classical peer reviewing system is flawed because it cannot be really double blind (relevant scientists can be easily identified by the references used in their articles). Pertti Saariluoma and I tried to suggest a combined method of double blind and non blind reviewing in order to overcome theses weaknesses (article full text in my profile and attached to this answer). Moreover, as a good friend of mine and professor at the Boston University put it, "they count articles but books count". That means, that the purpose indices and ranks are used for mostly is "academic" in a sense that it is just counted. A measurable impact on academic practice very often comes from comprehensive books, not so much from single articles.

Interesting answer. It is a pleasure that you add it!

Thank you so much for the pdf.

May I add that you worry too much about how articles are valued. All systems are a bit complicated. The author's opinion counts too: Which of your papers do YOU think is best or most useful or which one you enjoyed writing most or you think the results are of most value to others?

With time, citations/downloads can be picked up by many more people than those who have access to certain journals. Therefore, citations can reach more people than journals. I value both methods equally.

Thanks for giving your opinions, dear Michael and Hoachim.

@ All RG Members 

I thank Dr. Ali Gazni, really an expert,

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ali_Gazni

who send me the following mail:

Dear Ouerfelli,

The following link is a video in English language investigated the effect of journal’s impact factor on the paper’s citations. It could help you as a researcher and/or a research manager to choose right journals for the publications and to know about the extent to which the quality of the journals influences the papers’ citations. Other learning objectives of these videos are to know, the Nobel prize winners publish their papers in which group of journals, and to know about the publishing strategies in top global-ranked universities.

The training video in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYAobljYHW4&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYAobljYHW4

Best,

Ali Gazni

Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science, Regional Information Center for Science and Technology.