We know already that journal publications can have impact factors. Books are important sources for academicians and researchers. Why don't books have impact factors? In the future will there be a system similar to impact factor for books?
Thomson Reuters has launched the database Book Citation Index. It is a part of Web of Science but you have to have a separate subscription to have it included.
http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/bookcitationindex/
Agree but sadly at many places books do not high acknowledgement as research papers.. like in Pakistan books do not have any value in the promotion process.
It stems from the definition of IF, it is defined for periodic publications only. It measures the quality of the journal, not the quality of an individual article in it. The definition is here: http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryglossary/g/impactfactordefinition.htm, you can read about it in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor and at Thomson Reuters http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/impact_factor/
You can only calculate number of citations. It seems that WOS is going to add books, at least it is advertised but my books are not there (or nobody cites them, I do not know).
Thomson Reuters has launched the database Book Citation Index. It is a part of Web of Science but you have to have a separate subscription to have it included.
http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/bookcitationindex/
You might be interested in this blog post series on book impact: 'What has your book done for you lately?'. Part one (that deals with citations) is here: http://researchimpact.library.usyd.edu.au/what-has-your-book-done-for-you-lately-part-1-citations/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-has-your-book-done-for-you-lately-part-1-citations
That's right, impact factors are overblown, scientists can recognize good work but the problem is government and grant agencies. They alot money according to impact factors and h-index. If you have just excellent books and not enough publications with high impact factors, you get no money.
I agree with you both, generally the importance of IF is overestimated, but the money for science goes after this all impact factors and H-indexes. I think it will bring science to a dead end, nevertheless if journals have IF, books should it have as well.
Definitely. It will be nice to hear that books have been credited with impact factors.
Atleast books published by renowned and well known publishers must have min IF of 10
Whatever it wil be, it will not be IF because a book never cites itself and this is the way how IF is defined.
IF should be considered for books and Conference proceedings.
There is a need to review on Impact factor..
High IF is awarded to a few limited journals, while less than 2 or zero is allocated to most journals in the world. This has serious limitations.
1. Low IF would discourage growth of many journals in the world.
2. Low IF discourages scientists to publish important papers in such journals.
3. Discoveries published in low IF journals are undervalued by scientists. At the same time, it is almost impossible to publish research papers on physics discoveries in high IF factor journals like Nature from many countries.
4. There should be modification in IF so that importance is given to breakthroughs, discoveries or inventions instead of giving high IF to a few limited Journals due to various reasons. The current evaluation system is hindering the progress in science.
Journals with low IF are not undervalued by scientist, scientists can recognize the quality. they are undervalued by governments and grant agencies that alot money to scientific teams.
As a researcher I rarely refer to books as I assume the details quickly become out of date (except for one textbook that is a paradigm of the field and is revised fairly regularly - Janeway's Immunobiology). As an undergraduate, books were expensive (I guess they're more visible/available online now) so if I ever bought one it was cheap and probably out of date and lecture notes sufficed most of the time anyway.
So what actual purpose do books (hard copy or electronic) have in a rapidly evolving field, compared to primary research articles and peer reviewed reviews? Do they offer anything that a review doesn't?
The advantage of a book is that the topic is covered on one place and well organize. If you want to learn something, it is better the stady a few chapters from a book. Of course, you can go to the original literature, go to references, find a few houndred articles, examine them, you will then find that just fifty of them are relevant. And getting the articles is not cheap, you have to visit many libraries or pay for electronic access. If somebody works in industry, the books are cheaper. Unfortunatelly the author's work is not honoured, he royalty is usually small and only the articles are considered results of scientific work because they have IF.
Dear @Waluyo, this is most recent communication from Elsevier about the series books.
Serial Impact Factors!
"Impact Factors are a useful metric for understanding the quality and influence of a serial publication. Impact Factor measures both the number of articles and the number of citations reflecting the average number of times an article within that publication has been cited. It also categorises and ranks journals by subject area. Once a year new impact factors are announced based on the data from the previous 3 years. Here at Elsevier, it’s not just the journals team that look forward to this announcement but the book series team too...
In the most recent Impact Factor announcement the book series accomplished:
- Book series rank in the top 10 of 14 different Impact Factor categories
- 64% of our book series are in the top half of their Impact Factor categories
- 26 serials saw their Impact Factors increase in 2014
Whilst Impact Factor is the most used and well established metric, in recent years others have begun to gain traction. These include Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), Impact per Publication (IPP), and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) all using powerful Scopus data to identify top performers. These all help to build a more complete picture of the quality of a publication. The book series editors also use Scopus data to identify authoritative researchers to write on key growth topics in their research areas. Using this approach helps to ensure current and impactful publications."
http://onlinebooksconnect.elsevier.com/articles/serial-impact-factors?utm_campaign=Online%20Books%20Connect%202016%20-%20monthly&utm_campaignPK=163224313&utm_term=OP19028&utm_content=174609222&utm_source=68&BID=542400591&utm_medium=email&SIS_ID=0
http://onlinebooksconnect.elsevier.com/sites/default/files/docs/2015_Impact%20Factors_Serials.pdf
With over 50 years of research experience from India I express my unbiased opinion on IF. It is primarily based on the number of citations of articles published annually in that journal. The serious limitation with IF is that it does not give any credit to discovery, breakthrough or innovation reported. Hence IF discourages growth of science. For example, high IF journals retain their high IF though unable to publish a single discovery, breakthrough or innovation in last 5 years. IF factor is never raised for those journals published from most countries in the world even though they publish scientific discoveries. This has become a great setback for science and scientists working in most countries.
My research paper published in March 2010 in Brazilian Journal of Physics has just one citation, which is noteworthy. It claims six fundamental physics discoveries, yet the journal’s IF remains low. In fact, its IF should be highest since it claimed fundamental physics discoveries as many as six in one year.
I was able to publish three breakthrough papers in Solar Physics and Special Theory of Relativity in 2013 in an international journal published from India. These 3 papers have no citations. Low IF discourage scientists from publishing their papers in such journals. Those papers published in such journals are not even read by scientists from some countries. As a result, subjects like solar physics remained stagnated for long without any progress. The situation is very discouraging for the books published from most countries in the world because scientists in some countries do not care to read them
IF IS DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD TO MOST NATIONS , JOURNALS AND BOOKS. It is intended to help scientists only in two nations, their journals and Books. I WOULD PERSONALLY FEEL IF SHOULD NO LONGER BE CONSIDERED, TO DO JUSTICE TO MOST SCIENTISTS IN THE WORLD, MOST JOURNALS, AND BOOKS.
Yes, these are just numbers similarly as number of publicatins and number of citations. If you want to have really a breaktrhough, you probably work several years almost without publications and then you have one really good publication. The current scientometric system prefers publication of a huge amount of less important publications because governments and grant agencies look mostly at numbers, not at the quality of publications.
Zdenek Wagner, You are absolutely correct in saying the following. " If you want to have really a breakthrough, you probably work several years almost without publications and then you have one really good publication".
My comment It exactly happened in my case. A surprise finding that is spectacularly high counts than expected from Rb XRF source using a bare photomultiplier tube led to further experimentation to know what caused the excessive counts. After 4 years, two optical techniques developed by me revealed that it is UV dominant optical emission from radioisotopes and XRF sources. Total, I have spent 9 years in experimental research from 1988 to 1997. The research work claims six fundamental physics discoveries. Many Journals doubted it is difficult for an individual to do so much research work. Ultimately, the work was published in
M.A.Padmanabha Rao, UV dominant optical emission newly detected from radioisotopes and XRF sources, Braz. J. Phy., 40, no 1, 38¬46, 2010. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103¬97332010000100007
You are also correct in saying, "The current scientometric system prefers publication of a huge amount of less important publications because governments and grant agencies look mostly at numbers, not at the quality of publications". Even in India,, scientists published huge number of publications could get highest national award. Scientists who did discoveries, breakthroughs or innovations are just ignored.
- Sweta Yadav, What you said is true. IF has helped only two countries and in the rest of the world IF has caused immense injustice and harm to science.IF should be scrapped immediately.
Books and SciVal
"Scopus indexes both book series, and stand-alone books. “Books” in SciVal refers to stand-alone books only; their characteristics, and the fact that they do not have journal metrics, sets them apart from the series of books, journals, conference proceedings and trade publications. Scopus links citations to the individual chapters of edited volumes when the information provided by the author allows this, and otherwise to the edited volume itself. Scopus makes either one link or the other, but not both. SciVal credits a Researcher who is the author of a book chapter with the count of citations linked to that particular chapter; it credits a Researcher who is the editor of the entire volume with the citations linked to the volume plus those linked to all the individual chapters to ensure that the editor is credited with the full citation impact of their scholarly contribution..."
Don’t Judge a Book Series by Its Cover – Consider Impact Factor and Other Metrics!
https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/53327/scival-metrics-guidebook-v1_01-february2014.pdf
http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/book-cover-impact-factor/
Dear @Waluyo, dear colleagues, I have just received this fine article!
Considering the h-index for Book Authors!
"...In the context of books, Elsevier editors look at h-index as just one of a number of qualifications when considering a prospective author. Because our main aim is to produce high quality, useful resources for students and researchers around the globe — a library of works that can further the progress of science by providing a strong reference and foundation to support our excellent journal content — it is imperative that our books be written and edited by recognized experts, on highly valuable topics. We consider h-index as well as other credentials, affiliation, background, publication record, collaborators—and similarly, we examine the field-weighted citation impact, compound growth, and research output of the topic in question as well, to ensure it is significant to its audience. And all that is before we even start talking about peer review! By looking at a range of analytics as well as the context from a network of researchers and conference experiences, editors carefully consider and seek the best possible books to promote scientific progress. As Scopus is continues to increase book content and citations, this tool, as long as it is recognized as ‘only’ a tool, becomes increasingly interesting..."
https://onlinebooksconnect.elsevier.com/articles/considering-the-h-index-for-book-authors?utm_campaign=Online%20Books%20Connect%202016%20-%20monthly&utm_campaignPK=163224313&utm_term=OP19028&utm_content=237394444&utm_source=20&BID=714300706&utm_medium=email&SIS_ID=0
The number of citations, a book receives can be counted as its impact.
The Book Citation Index in Web of Science™ Core Collection connects a library’s book collection to powerful new discovery tools, giving researchers the ability to quickly and easily identify and access the most relevant books. As a part of Web of Science Core Collection, Book Citation Index allows users to search seamlessly across books, journals and conference proceedings to find the information most relevant to their work within one platform...
http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/bookcitationindex/
Impact Factor by definition could not be applied for books, and many readers are used to ask about the book author name not the book name itself besides many famous books are well-known by authors name like (in mechanical engineering) Hearn, Ashby, ..etc, so I think that is so sufficient to evaluate books. In addition I completely agree with all above comments.
Regards, Emad
Books are our life right from schooldays to the academic performance , & the interest of reading the books starts from earlier stage of our life to the present time.
With the development of the scientific & technological advancement , researchers have help us to beautify the world & also the requisite luxury in our life . With this medical profession with the literature, on the various topical areas have made our library every where in the world full of books of various topics & culture of various part of the world.
I do not know the present time but during my earlier years quite good prominent doctors used to ask for the book of their taste for reading during their night time rest .
The books have the changed the life or so to say the thinking performance of human beings for their growth & development of their lifeline.
This is my personal opinion
All books presents the singular opinion on the problem of humanité, and can not be used in research index evaluation. Reflexion is not the research fonction. Only some technical books can be exclure of the category "BOOKs"
Some more resources for the issue of impact factor for books.
With the inclusion of The Book Citation Index in Web of Science, Thomson Reuters has expanded the scope of its presentation of citation coverage to include this essential scholarly format. As with the journal and proceedings literature books will also be selected according to a welldefined set of criteria.
The goal of these selection processes is to build a comprehensive view of the scholarly literature across the major formats: journals, conference proceedings, and now scholarly books. By careful evaluation of the content and format of each publication, Thomson Reuters assures not only that all citation indexes in Web of Science contain the most relevant and timely research, but also that rigorous Bibliographic Control will ensure that this research is discoverable...
http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/bookcitationindex/
http://wokinfo.com/media/pdf/BKCI-SelectionEssay_web.pdf
Interesting question,
I think later will be more legislation for book publishing such as papers.
Regards
Good question,
As book is the key source of knowledge that why it may be impact factor
Dear All, please is there any update regarding the subject? Best.
I have made the following comment for news in the Indian media (The Wire). I am pained when a scientific discovery resulted from 30 years of research is rejected by Nature Astronomy without caring to forward to Reviewers. There is a need for the Governments, individual institutions, journals etc to encourage discoveries. It is because scientific discovery is rare in the history of science. Every scientist and every nation cannot do a discovery. The discoveries are preferred for Nobel Prize.
https://thewire.in/the-sciences/impact-factors-fail-in-evaluating-scientists-why-does-the-ugc-still-use-it
OPINION & REPORT FROM INDIA'S CURRENT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERER: First of all, the Impact Factor (IF) helps to promote journals from two or three nations. At the same time, by awarding LOW IF to journals in other nations, immense harm is being done to those journals and for progress in science in other nations. Scientists in the west, do not read the articles published in countries such as India as a result they do not cite Indian research papers, with a very few exceptions. As a result, IF of journals from nations like India always remain very low. IF THE PAPER REPORTS A DISCOVERY, SOME JOURNALS LIKE NATURE REJECT THE PAPER, SO THAT OTHER NATIONS NEVER GET THE CREDIT OF A DISCOVERY. THEY WANTED TO SHOW, COUNTRIES LIKE INDIA NEVER DID A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. My research paper claiming discovery of UV dominant optical emission NEWLY DETECTED from radioisotopes and XRF sources was rejected by journals as many as 13. I had to try one journal after another for over 10 years, until it is published in Brazilian Journal of Physics in 2010. Few days back, I have sent a paper entitled, Discovery Of 235-uranium Fission Taking Place In Collision Of Neutron Stars Cause Gravitational Waves And Electromagnetic Radiations to Nature Astronomy. It was rejected immediately without caring even to Referees. Some of these journals openly demonstrate bias or discrimination from publishing scientific discoveries from countries like India. This is a very unhealthy trend in science, but they do openly. They do not mind publishing ordinary papers in Nature Astronomy with very old concepts, keeping readers in ignorance forever. I am surprised why the journal rejects advancements in science.
This is helpful article for the issue of citations from books.
Article An Automatic Method for Extracting Citations From Google Books
Citations counts for books!
Finding Citation Counts for Books and Book Chapters
"A number of disciplines, especially in the Social Sciences and the Arts & Humanities publish their research in books and other types of publications. These disciplines are not that well served by traditional tools of citation analysis such as Web of Science and Scopus that primarily focus on journal literature. So how do you gauge the scholarly impact of your books and chapters in books? Listed below are a few strategies, while they are not perfect or comprehensive, they can help you collect some relevant data..."
https://osu.libguides.com/oardc/citation_analysis/books
Impact factors are a useful metric for understanding the quality and influence of a serial publication. Impact Factor measures both the number of articles and the number of citations reflecting the average number of times an article within that publication has been cited. It also categorises and ranks journals by subject area. Once a year new impact factors are announced based on the data from the previous 3 years. Here at Elsevier, it’s not just the journals team that look forward to this announcement but the book series team too.
regards
I prescribe to several history and psychology journals, but the majority of my information comes from books-often with journal articles in them. It is in fact a necessity to consult books rather than journals as there the information has often been thoroughly critiqued and improved upon.
Certainly books will have impact factor:
https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=N80kIiYAAAAJ&hl=en
https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=ZcvIxwsAAAAJ&hl=en
The only issue is, until otherwise, it is really a good, people don't cite that often.
I have edited over 25 books, certainly people do cite individual chapters and which are included in elevating my impact factor.
@ Padmanabha Rao
I understand that you're addressing about the politics of publications. It is a sensitive issue, not pertaining to a single journal, but for many journals belongs to many countries, including India. Let's be honest, how easy for any Indian scientist to get published in Current Science? Politics are there everywhere, we have to work around the system.
Nature Physics has an impact factor of 23, which might be a good choice. But, you could go for a journal with little lower impact factor. My highest cited paper is not published in the highest impact factor journal. If the paper is good, it will get cited anyways. No one can stop it - even if an editor of a highest impact factor journal thinks that he/she wants to suppress such work. Papers getting rejected is part of academic experience. I am sure, everyone has faced with it in their academic career. You could have even submitted such paper to other journals such as Nature, Science, or PNAS. At least one might be in a position to accept it. When you say, you tried 10 years to get published, that is really disturbing. Perhaps, you didn't understand the knack of getting things published. When I write a paper, mostly I know, which one might be the best fit, second and third fit to some extend. So, I see something seriously wrong with your choice in identifying the target journal. Why it took 10 years to identify Brazilian journal might be the best choice for you?
Certainly good science can be done anywhere in the world, especially in India. Indians who have migrated abroad have unequivocally pro ven this fact. At the same time, many Indian scientists in India is good in procrastinating things. Once the job is secured, they don't do research, blame the administrative load, submit abstract, but never write a full paper and poor quality of work. They will always find an excuse to defend their position as to why they didn't do certain things. Although it can be considered as a generalized statement, this is true as well. Might not include everyone, but many would fit in this category.
I have worked in the US state government research facility. Every department is considered as a 'mini enterprise'. Productivity in terms of securing external and national funding and output in terms of publication is considered for bonuses and promotions. One doesn't have to be the oldest person (based on their seniority) to chair a department, but the one who is the youngest with most productivity. It is rotated in cases. Do you think, such system would work in the Indian scenario?
http://pandi-perumal.blogspot.com
I have invitation from intechopen too to write book chapter, tell me its worth to write or not?
@ Dilbag Singh. It is waste of your time and energy. You have to pay to get it published. Most of the chapters never get cited. Plus, the publishers makes money out of it. Until otherwise, they want to pay you to write the chapter. in such case, you should go for it!
@ Dilbag Singh: It is not easy to give you the right answer. Writing a good book chapter certainly requires more time and effort than writing a good article. Books are rarely cited, book chapters almost never. This means that you get practically no credit as an author. You may write it for money if the publisher decide to pay. However, the royalty is usually about 10% of the sales divided between all authors of all books. You can easily calculate that you will not get good money. In spite of that the book wil probably be read by many people. A short time ago we accepted to write a book chapter because it can strenghthen our identification as experts in our field and can thus increase our chance to obtain grants in the future. You must evaluate it for yourself, who is the publisher, who is the editor, who are the authors of other chapters. If it can improve your position in the scientific comunity, its worth to do it even without being paid. If not, it will be better to spend time and energy for something more beneficial.
Google Books is a good source for Book Citations, "despite its lack of a public citation index."
An excellent article:
An automatic method for extracting citations from Google Books
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83995/is-there-an-equivalent-to-journal-impact-factor-for-scholarly-book-publishers
Article An Automatic Method for Extracting Citations From Google Books
I think edited volumes are still very important, similar in value to a special issue of a respected journal on a particular theme, but then usually more comprehensive and consistent, if the editors have taken the effort to raise it to a level well beyond the entry point of merely bundling a set of papers presented at a conference panel (which I find a lazy practise, and one I quite oppose).
In terms of whether it gets read much a couple of factors to consider:
(1) many book editors (authors) think that this is entirely the responsibility of the publishing house, and are then disappointed to see nothing happen.. You need to advertize it, launch it at a relevant place, and have your academic network get in touch with it (presentations on it, etc) - if you are proud of the book and think it has something important to say, then don't feel over modest about 'plugging' it in conversations;
(2) is the book accessible? Hard cover copies are exhorbitantly expensive by my opinion, limiting their acquisition to uni libraries, but the paperback and e-format versions much less so. So make sure it is available in that modus ;
(3) Do the authors of its parts get a chance to share their bit of the book? This is too often not discussed, let alone strategized upon.. Hence, as editors discuss with the publishing house whether the stand alone chapters can be made publicly available with a cover page, etc in a pdf format, so authors can share these through their own channels while also making a name for the book their chapter is part of.
Just a few thoughts, hope they are of value even though they don't get to the fundaments of your question of whether/when books have an impact factor.
The problem is, if a chapter is freely available in PDF, nobody will buy the book. Publishing costs money and the agreement between the publisher and authors always contains no-competition rule. Electronic version is cheaper if it is published together with the printed book. the amount of publisher's work and advertizing is the same. The system for selling the electronic licenses of the books is expensive as well. and the book either contains DRM which means that the book cannot be transferred to another device and cannot be used in a library or they can be illegally copied. Thus publishing only PDF/EPUB/MOBI will make the e-books as expensive and the printed books. The price of the paper is not so high as the price of human work and the infrastructure. The e-books can only be cheaper because the infrastructure and human work is already paid by the printed books.
The answer of Hamideh is identical as contribution made in introductory part of this research question, made by Marie Strahle . Just go to the top of the page. Previous contributions must be visited and revisited.
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