Impact factor (IF) and NAAS score

IF and NAAS score are related in the sense that all agricultural and allied sciences journals which find space in NAAS list and those that have been assigned IF by Thompson Reuters carry a weight of 6.00 + IF,

e.g. if IF of a journal is 1.25 then its NAAS score would be 6.00 + 1.25 =7.25.

The journals in the NAAS list which do not have IF assigned to them, carry a score which is less than 6.00 on a 20.00 point scale.

I hope to find my answer here:

Presentation "CiteScore vs Impact Factor", narrated by: Asst. Prof. Dr. E...

Regards,

Emad

The impact factor of Web of science from Clarivate analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters) is the most trusted, official, and better score all over the world.

I totally agree with all colleagues, however, some researchers prefer the h indexes.

I agree with all colleagues,the IF is number of articles is get effect from this journal thus most refered journal have higher impact on progression of science

Dear , you will find useful information in links below:

nkbiosoft2012.blogspot.com/2012/07/national-academy-of-agricultural.html

naasindia.org/page.php?pageid=54

www.environmentaljournal.org/impact-factor-and-index-copernicus.pdf

Impact factor (IF) and NAAS score

IF and NAAS score are related in the sense that all agricultural and allied sciences journals which find space in NAAS list and those that have been assigned IF by Thompson Reuters carry a weight of 6.00 + IF,

e.g. if IF of a journal is 1.25 then its NAAS score would be 6.00 + 1.25 =7.25.

The journals in the NAAS list which do not have IF assigned to them, carry a score which is less than 6.00 on a 20.00 point scale.

Hai,

It has been clearly explained by Dr.K.M Singh

For determining NAAS score of research journals, the Academy has classified them into the following two categories:-

Category I: Those journals where Thompson Reuters Impact Factor is available, the scores are assigned as 6.00 + Impact Factor with capping on 20.00.

Category II: Those journals where Thompson Reuters Impact Factor is not available, the marks are assigned on the basis of information provided by the Publishers in a proforma prescribed by the Academy

NAAS scores and everything is a good way to measure the scientific merit of a research.

But the issue arises when NAAS scores are not available for some of "reputed and refereed" journal (e.g. JoPD). In such cases the publication pose no use for the scientists in especially NARS of India.

what can be done to resolve this?

Dear Md Bokhtiar Rahman,

I had answered a part of your question a few days back explaining the difference between Impact Factor and NAAS score of research journals. How ever I find the other parts of your query interesting so decided to add my views in this regard.

1. Why Impact factor and NAAS score are necessary ?

Academic employers world over use various methods to evaluate an academic's performance, IF and NAAS score are just two of such methods. While publications by agricultural scientists/ teachers in India are evaluated through NAAS scores, other countries rely on IF or many other methods, which of course others would be able to throw light. But NAAS ( which stands for National Academy of Agricultural Sciences) is only used in India, I am not aware that any other country uses the scores or not, may be you could enlighten us in this regard.

2. What are the differences between Impact factor and NAAS score?

(Already answered)

3. Which is the better consideration for article publication?

Depends, where you are located and what is your subject e.g. in India if you are from agricultural sciences NAAS score is valid for you but not for other disciplines like humanities or medical sciences etc.

4. What are the formulas for conversion NAAS to Impact factor and vice versa? (Already explained earlier)

Regards

Follow this link

http://www.agriglance.com/2016/07/07/how-is-naas-rating-used-to-calculate-impact-factor/

regards

You might have got your answer. The IF can't be used everywhere as relevance of different journals may be different for different areas. NAAS rating is done based on criteria suitable for agricultural research. Some of the journals may not be having IF are still important to promote regional research in agricultural. However, NAAS also takes into account IF while rating journals.

I appreciate the submission of Prof. K. M. Singh on this discussion.

There are many journals in India, which do not come under the Impact Factor scheme of Clarivate Analyitcs. The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) has recognized this fact and came up with a scheme for agriculture and related disciplines. According to the scheme, each journal is assessed, and its relative merit and standing among researchers is indicated by giving points out of a maximum of 20.

Before assigning points, NAAS first ascertain whether the journal is already having an ‘Impact Factor’ of Clarivate Analytics. For those journals where JIF is available, the scores are assigned as 6.00 + Impact Factor up to 20.00 (category I), and for those journals where JIF is not available, the rating is from 1 to 6.00 only (category II). The academy periodically revises its rating. The rating is available from http://www.naasindia.org/rating.html.

Until 2018, NAAS rating was solely related to Journal Impact Factor of Clarivate Analyitcs. It would have been better , if they had considered CiteScore of Scopus (Elsevier) too for determining the NAAS score!

The NAAS rating of journals is highly inappropriate due to the following reasons.

Under the present system of ranking as per NAAS rating those journals where Thompson Reuters Impact Factor is available, the scores are assigned as 6.00 + Impact Factor with capping on 20.00 which seems to be highly inappropriate for example :-

Thompson Reuters Impact Factor of most of the Indian journals X,Y,Z having range from 0.00 (AATCC Review) to 1.53 (Indian Journal of Medical Research) and as per NAAS ranking, the rating of first journal becomes 6.00 and 7.53 of the second one which is not realistic.

Furthermore, most of the agricultural scientific professional in India do publish papers in the Indian journals (Indian journal of Agricultural Sciences/ Animal Sciences/Horti. Sciences etc.) whose impact factor as per NAAS rating comes in between (6.0-7.0). If one agricultural cientist/researcher/academician publishes a paper in journal having Thompson R euters Impact Factor >5 then as per NAAS rating the ranking of the paper becomes 11.0 and if he or she publishes the paper in Indian Journal whose Thompson Reuters Impact Factor is in the range of 0.01-1.0 then the paper rating becomes 6.01-7.0 it means that the said impact factor is inappropriately used to give high ranking to Indian Journals while low ranking of journal having impact factor of >5. While, in practice if one publishes 25 papers in Indian journal of X,Y,Z science having impact factor of 0.20 then at international level these 25 papers are equal to one paper having >5 Thompson Reuters Impact Factor but under present NAAS rating the sum of two papers of 6.2 is more (12.4 than one paper having Thompson Reuters Impact Factor 5 then it becomes 6+5 = 11) is it realistic ??. Nevertheless, these 25 papers as per NAAS rating may have overall 155 points (25x6.2) whereas one international paper of 5 Thompson Reuters Impact Factor the total points would be only 11 (6+5).

At one end NAAS authorities encourages scientist/researchers to publish papers in high impact factors journals but at the same time the present rating system discourages to do so. If the contribution of Indian publications at international level has to increase than this inappropriate rating system need to be relooked so that the researchers from India will publish more and more paper at international level too. Moreover, with the prevailing NAAS rating system lot of disappointment is there and researchers are satisfied to publish maximum papers in Indian Journal of X,Y,Z sciences in order to score more and more as per requirement while seeking employment and/or promotion, is it justified?? Therefore, keeping above facts in mind I would like to request that the present rating system which is highly unrealistic need to be revisited so that scientist/researchers get encouragement to publish paper in the journals having high Thompson Reuters Impact Factor at international level in order to increase the contribution from Indian researchers.

In fact, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences introduced this rating system to decide the merit of publications of applicants for various awards instituted by them. At that time, maximum points for a journal was 10 (now maximum is 20). Later ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) and State Agricultural Universities adopted this rating, as it seemed convenient for them. Anyway, it is high time to modify or improve the system considering the latest trends.

@ The present system of NAAS scoring in India is to promote the publications only in Indian Journals vis~a~vis suppressing the quality publications having high IF recognised internationally. Moreover, while deciding the NAAS fellowships, and even for ASRB selection the Fellowships as well as jobs being taken by those who publish more and more in the Indian Js in order to get high total score.

In the same process the scientists/researchers who publish only a few papers in the high IF Js deprives by virtue of having low score (total). In that way NAAS authorities have virtually destroyed the system of selecting NAAS Fellows and even selecting only the mediocre ??????.

Will someone take care of NARS system????

I have gone through the detailed comments and I could understand that they are seeking the number of papers / quantity and not quality . Is this the point you want to stress ? Since If a paper is published in high IF journals then he may get more marks / score. Because I feel nowadays in recruitment to SAUs they are asking for papers with more than 6 / 7.5 and varies with the universities. In such cases the Indian Journals may not even come under this scope, except a few.

@ partially yes. The only thing I want to submit that instead of making NAAS Js scoring of Thompson IF+ 6, which does not rationalise the real worth of any publication with high IF. For example, think 6+6.5=12.5 and also 6+0.5=6.5 but one publication of having 6.5 Thompson IF means theoretically it is equal to 13 research papers each with 0.5 TIF rating while their grant total would be 13x6.5=84.5 but in overall scoring of earlier publication with TIF rating of 6.5 would only be 12.5(6=6.5) that is really bothering.

Also instead of making TIF+ 6 why NAAS authorities, and ASRB should not opt/adopt directly Thompson IF???????. Pl. think over it.

Relying only on Jurnal Impact Factor is not a good idea. Some drawbacks of journal impact factor must be considered. Journal impact factor applies to those journals that are indexed by Journal Citation Reports (JCR) only. Naturally, journals not covered by JCR will not have an impact factor. For a long time, there was no competition for the Journal Impact Factor. In 2016, Elsevier launched CiteScore to counter the monopolistic JIF of Clarivate Analyitcs (earlier Thomson Reuters/ISI). You can freely access CiteScore on the Scopus Journal Metrics website. At the same time, JCR is a paid subscription. Elsevier also claims that CiteScore is calculated from the list of Scopus journals, which is much larger than the Web of Science list. In my opinion, NAAS should come out with a new metric considering both JIF and CiteScore.

An impact factor, in general sense, comprises: a data base of qualified journals, which enables citations; a database of citations of articles in the editions of qualified journals; and a mathematical formula that scores the periodical according to quotations . Clarivate has its own base of journals (JCR), but accounts for citations from other regional bases such as Chinese Science Citation Database, Russian Science Citation Index, KCI Korean Journal Database e SciELO Citation Index (Clarivate Analytics, 2018b).

Likewise, Scopus, Scielo and Google Scholar have their bases and formulas. So, what would be the best impact factor? In my view, this question has no single and universal answer. Google scholar enables citations in academic publications, such as Theses and dissertations, books. That greatly expands the amount of citations. Is that good, or bad? Good for some cases and bad for others.

The NAAS, implicitly, creates two subgroups: the elite group, indexed in the JCR, and the group of "Others", formed by those not indexed in the JCR base. This can, in some cases, lead to distortions. There are many good journals with no JCR better than many JCR journals.

The ideal would be transparency and access to the databases of journals and citations. However, e commercial interests do not allow that. There are many costs and economic interests involved. Some legitimate interest, some not. For the community of academics and researchers, it is important to know the impact factor and the credibility of the institution that calculates it. And keeping in a productive debate.

what is the problem in assigning both NAAS rating and impact factor to each journal ?

What is the Difference Between Impact Factor , NAAS and Thompson Reuters Score of Science Journals ?

Dear Nazir Khan Mohammadi, I will try to clear your doubts. Read the answer carefully, which is somewhat lengthy.

Impact factor and journal rating are part of citation analysis. Citation analysis presumes that serious research workers and important publications are cited more frequently than non-serious ones. Journal Impact factor, CiteScore, Journal rating, and Cited References are the principal means generally followed for this purpose.

Journal Impact Factor

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) shows the frequency with which the articles published in a journal are cited in other research journals. For those journals that are indexed by Clarivate Analytics’(formerly, Thompson Reuters) Journal Citation Reports (JCR), annual Impact Factors are calculated and revised on a yearly basis. Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is an annual publication by Clarivate Analytics. You can access the latest Journal Citation Reports by searching “JCR on the web”.

JIF for a journal is computed based on a three-year period by dividing the total number of current year citations with the source articles published in that journal during the preceding two years. Let us take an example. We want to calculate IF for 2018. Let ‘x’ be the number of times articles published in 2016 and 2017 were cited in indexed journals during 2018, and ‘y’ the number of articles and others published in 2016 and 2017. Then, the IF for 2018 would be x/y. Please note that the Impact Factor of a journal for 2018 can be published only in 2019, as it is impossible to assess the journal until all the 2018 issues come out.

CiteScore

CiteScore is a new journal metric launched by Elsevier in 2016 as an alternative to the monopolistic “Journal Impact Factor” of Clarivate Analyitcs. The two companies already have competing bibliographical citation databases in Scopus (Elsevier) and the Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics). As the Impact Factor is derived from journals indexed in the Web of Science, other journals cannot have an Impact Factor. Elsevier also claims that CiteScore is calculated from the list of Scopus journals, which is much larger than the Web of Science list.

CiteScore is computed for a publication as an average of the sum of citations it received in a particular year to documents published in the immediate three previous years divided by the total publications in the same previous three years. Please note that Citescore uses three year data instead of two years by JIF for its calculation. You can note down “CiteScore” and other bibliometric values from the site, https://www.scopus.com/sources .

NAAS rating of journals

There are many journals in India, which do not come under the Impact Factor scheme of Clarivate Analyitcs. The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) has recognized this fact and came up with a scheme for agriculture and related disciplines. According to the scheme, each journal is assessed, and its relative merit and standing among researchers is indicated by giving points out of a maximum of 20.

Before assigning points, NAAS first ascertain whether the journal is already having an ‘Impact Factor’ of Clarivate Analytics. For those journals where JIF is available, the scores are assigned as 6.00 + Impact Factor up to 20.00 (category I), and for those journals where JIF is not available, the rating is from 1 to 6.00 only (category II). The academy periodically revises its rating. The rating is available from http://www.naasindia.org/rating.html.

Until 2018, NAAS rating was solely related to Journal Impact Factor of Clarivate Analyitcs. It would have been better, if they had considered CiteScore of Scopus (Elsevier) too for determining the NAAS score!