![Distribution of the participation of Spanish authors in the area of Cardiology by language of edition of the journals (% of authors, 1999-2008 period, Science Citation Index-Expanded and I ´ ndice Me´dico Espan˜ol [Spanish Biomedical Database])](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rafael-Aleixandre-Benavent/publication/257663125/figure/fig3/AS:670012050268173@1536754729627/Distribution-of-the-participation-of-Spanish-authors-in-the-area-of-Cardiology-by_Q320.jpg)
Content uploaded by Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent on Nov 16, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Impact Factor in non-English-speaking countries
Gregorio Gonza
´lez-Alcaide •Juan Carlos Valderrama-Zuria
´n•
Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent
Received: 6 February 2012
ÓAkade
´miai Kiado
´, Budapest, Hungary 2012
Abstract The representativeness of the ISI-Thomson Impact Factor rankings and the
existing relationship between countries’ national languages and the diffusion of scientific
publications is analyzed. We discuss literature on the Impact Factor related to language
use, publication strategies for authors and editors from non-English-speaking countries, the
effects of the inclusion of a new journal in the ISI-Thomson databases and the scientific
policies articulated in some non-English-speaking countries. The adoption of the Impact
Factor as the valuation criterion for scientific activities has favoured the consolidation of
English language journals in the diffusion of scientific knowledge. The vernacular lan-
guages only conserve part of their importance in certain disciplines, such as Clinical
Medicine or Social Sciences and Humanities. The Impact Factor, invented over 50 years
ago now, could be a limitation for non-English authors and scientific journals, and does not
consider some widely used practices among the scientific community concerning the
development of Internet as a means for the diffusion of knowledge.
Keywords Journal Impact Factor Language Scientific literature Publishing
Introduction
The representativeness of the ISI-Thomson Impact Factor rankings, mainly dominated by
publications in English, is a subject that has attracted special interest in Central and South
G. Gonza
´lez-Alcaide (&)J. C. Valderrama-Zuria
´n
Departamento de Historia de la Ciencia y Documentacio
´n, Universitat de Vale
`ncia, Valencia, Spain
e-mail: gregorio.gonzalez@uv.es
G. Gonza
´lez-Alcaide J. C. Valderrama-Zuria
´nR. Aleixandre-Benavent
Unidad de Informacio
´n e Investigacio
´n Social y Sanitaria-UISYS, Palau de Cervero
´.4,
Cisneros Square, 46003 Vale
`ncia, Spain
R. Aleixandre-Benavent
Universitat de Vale
`ncia, CSIC, Valencia, Spain
123
Scientometrics
DOI 10.1007/s11192-012-0692-y
American countries, as well as in many European countries, whose populations speak
mainly Spanish or Portuguese or who share a language with an outstanding scientific
tradition, such as French or German. This question, that of the existing relationship
between countries’ national languages and the diffusion of scientific publications, has also
been examined in South-East Asia, by such emerging powers as China or India, as well as
in other highly developed countries, scientifically and technologically speaking, such as
Japan or Korea.
In such a situation, it is of the greatest interest to carry out a bibliographic review and to
analyse the existing evidence in relation to such aspects as: What are the implications of
the language used with respect to the degree of citation? What publication strategies have
authors and editors of scientific journals adopted with respect to the language of publi-
cation and the diffusion of papers? What position do journals not publishing in English
occupy in the ISI-Thomson Impact Factor rankings? What is the evolution of the Impact
Factors of the journals that do not publish in English? What effect do scientific policies
have on the Impact Factor of papers? Or, what alternative indicators and valuation plat-
forms to the ISI-Thomson Impact Factor have been developed?
The English language has become the lingua franca for the diffusion of scientific
knowledge. It has also become the dominant language in such areas as Natural Sciences or
Biomedical Sciences. Thus, for instance, in the case of Spain, the percentage of documents
published in Spanish in these areas has been below 20% since 1989 and below 10% since
2002, showing a decreasing tendency in the relative weight of the Spanish language, which
can be observed from the start of the 1980s and which has continued to the present day
(Fig. 1).
Spanish has only conserved a certain weight in particular areas of knowledge, such as
Clinical Medicine (Gonza
´lez Alcaide et al. 2010; Gonza
´lez Alcaide et al. 2012), or in the
Social Sciences and Humanities (Fig. 2).
Fig. 1 Diachronic evolution of the language of Spanish publications collected in Science Citation Index-
Expanded database (% of documents by language)
G. Gonza
´lez-Alcaide et al.
123
The Impact Factor and the strategy of bilingual publication in journals
from non-English-speaking countries
Nowadays, English is considered to be the international language of Science and most
articles in the international databases are published in English. Only a minority are pub-
lished in other languages such as German, French or Spanish, and logically only a certain
number of researchers can read such articles. Thus, many editors of scientific journals, as
well as authors, believe that the publication of an article in any language other than English
will decrease the accessibility to the results of the research and its diffusion among more
numerous collectives (Bakewell 1992). Such is the belief in this fact that some authors
wonder whether it is worth the effort of publishing in any language other than English,
since it may well be ‘‘Lost Science’’ (Stolerman and Stenius 2008).
Faced with this situation, some editors from non-English-speaking countries have
chosen to adopt English as the standard language for their publications (mainly in the
case of the Sciences), or they have adopted the strategic decision to make bilingual
editions (a widely used solution in such areas as Clinical Medicine in Europe and Latin
America), publishing the articles in both the native language of their country and
English. They thus hope to maintain their national audience, while also increasing the
international diffusion of their papers (Bordons and Go
´mez 2004). On the other hand,
countries such as Japan and China have taken the decision to select their best articles and
translate them to English (Meneghini and Packer 2007). For some editors, this strategy is
essential to attract authors who send their articles in English and they should take special
care over the editions in this language. However, another necessary action is the pub-
lication of editorials and letters signed by reputed professionals, which means that the
journals will be known by the leaders of opinion in each field and that they will consider
the journal as a candidate for sending their highest quality research articles (Heras et al.
2010).
Fig. 2 Diachronic evolution of Spanish publications in Science Citation Index-Expanded database (% of
Spanish language documents)
The Impact Factor
123
Numerous studies that have analysed the relation between the language of publication
and the degree of citation have demonstrated that works published in journals edited in
English show a higher degree of citation. Thus, Mueller and cols. (2006) investigated the
association between the Impact Factor and the language of publication for a series of
medical journals. They found that the Impact Factor of the journals is more closely
associated with the language (English vs. non-English) than with the journal’s country of
origin, since the mean Impact Factor of the medical journals published in English-language
journals originating in the USA, did not differ significantly from that of the journals in
English originating in other countries. In some areas, such as dental literature,Epidemi-
ology (Filion and Pless 2008)orEcology (Leimu and Koricheva 2005), a direct relation has
been observed between the language articles are published in and the number of citations
they receive. Thus, in dental literature, it was found that papers published in English were
cited five times more than those published in other languages (Poomkottayil et al. 2011).
This association, which indicates that publication in English favours the citation frequency
and the Impact Factor, has also been found by other authors such as Winkmann and cols.
(2002).
However, other works have shown that there is no clear connection between an increase
in the degree of citation for papers published initially in other languages and which are
translated to English as a strategy of the journals’ editors (bilingual journals) (Bracho-
Riquelme et al. 1997; Bracho-Riquelme et al. 1999). Te
´llez-Zenteno and cols. (2007)
demonstrated that there were no statistically significant differences among papers pub-
lished in Latin American medical journals between those papers published in journals in
English, bilingual journals and journals written in the native language, Spanish or Portu-
guese; in spite of the fact that the average is a little higher in favour of English. In addition
to the question, which is not clear, of whether the bilingual edition directly increases the
impact of a paper, there is also the problem that the translation to English of all or some of
the articles is a costly system, perhaps too costly; maybe even unattainable for developing
countries.
Publication strategies for authors and editors from non-English-speaking countries
The greater citation for works published in English, and therefore the possibility of
reaching a higher impact, is a well-known fact for researchers from non-English-speaking
countries. Consequently, they try to publish their papers in English language journals of an
international nature, or at least to publish their best articles in this language. These journals
are usually those which have the greatest Impact Factors and, at the same time, get the
high quality articles; which in turn allows them to maintain and even increase their
pre-eminence in the impact rankings.
The quality of a paper, and thereby its Impact Factor, cannot be dependent on the fact
that it is in English, since excellent works may be published in any language. However,
with the current system of scientific recognition, this fact is unavoidable, in spite of its
inconsistency. Researchers must look for strategies through which they can publish in
journals with a recognised Impact Factor. The possibility of publishing in journals with a
high Impact Factor is an important subject on which to reflect for countries which are not
English-speaking, as many of the Science valuation systems and their finance are based on
this type of publication. Nevertheless, what is also certain is that numerous journals of a
regional nature play an important role in the diffusion of particular types of knowledge
among certain collectives.
G. Gonza
´lez-Alcaide et al.
123
On the other hand, some editors generally reject articles from countries which are not
part of the scientific e
´lite, as they ‘‘suspect’’ a priori that they will not be cited very much
and that they will therefore have a negative effect on the journal’s Impact Factor. In order
to try to mitigate this, some authors adopt the strategy of citing the research produced in the
leading scientific nations, in the hope that their colleagues will recognise their work and
thus improve their own success (Meneghini et al. 2008). In this sense, articles written by
researchers from English-speaking countries have a greater probability of being accepted
for publication than those of authors from non-English-speaking countries (Borsuk et al.
2009). What is the solution to this problem? There is no easy solution, though two possible
strategies are usually proposed: (a) authors tend to publish their best articles in interna-
tional English language journals and articles of local interest in national journals;
(b) editors try to adopt bilingual publication strategies in their native language and English
or only in English. There are also strategies aimed at increasing the citation and impact
degree of their publications.
As for the authors, the fact that many non-English-speaking authors publish in both
English language journals and native language journals is a direct consequence of the
adoption of the Impact Factor as the valuation criterion and this shows that many
researchers discriminate between works published with respect to the language, sending
those they consider to be of a greater quality or international diffusion to journals in
English, and generally with higher Impact Factors, while other papers are sent to national,
native language journals (Hasse and Fischer 2010). As an example, it has been shown that
88.9% of Spanish authors in the area of Cardiology, who have published more than nine
documents, have published in both Spanish language and English language journals
(Bolan
˜os Pizarro 2012) (Fig. 3).
Another interesting aspect with respect to non-English-speaking countries is the ques-
tion of duplicated, or redundant, publications. In this sense, Tucker and cols. (2011)
determined that 19% of the papers published in English by Chinese institutions in medical
journals had a considerable element of content overlap with respect to papers published in
Chinese. More detailed empirical studies should be developed to allow the degree of
overlap between publications in English and other languages to be determined. This is
Fig. 3 Distribution of the participation of Spanish authors in the area of Cardiology by language of edition
of the journals (% of authors, 1999–2008 period, Science Citation Index-Expanded and I
´
ndice Me
´dico
Espan
˜ol [Spanish Biomedical Database])
The Impact Factor
123
important as, should the extent of this practice be confirmed, it could suppose an important
change to the Impact Factor of scientific journals and, in general, to all the bibliometric
indicators which establish a relationship between the number of documents published and
the degree of citation. Similarly, there needs to be a more detailed analysis of the influence,
with respect to citations, of other ethically reproachable practices such as ‘‘fragmentation’’
of articles or ‘‘ghost authorship’’, as their contribution does not justify their inclusion as
co-authors.
The editors of scientific journals, on the other hand, apart from the strategy of bilingual
publication mentioned above, have also adopted another series of practices. As an example,
we could mention here their use of open systems, such as the Public Library of Science
(PLOS), which allow authors of non-English-speaking countries to send, together with the
English version, a version in their native language as complementary material (supporting
material). Thus, authors can attract both national and international readers, as well as their
citations. The electronic edition of the English version is another strategy which is rec-
ommended to increase the impact, as it allows universal diffusion while also providing
numerous advantages to readers, as it facilitates searching and reading. This version allows
online publication with a Digital Object Identifier (doi) that minimizes delays and permits
early citation before the printed version appears. Another strategy of some editors, which is
ethically more questionable, is to ask for their readers’ co-operation in various ways; not
only to cite articles published in their journal, but also to do so when they publish in other,
international journals, as this increases the number of external citations and reduces self-
citations (Ferna
´ndez and Plasencia 2002). However, self-citation, in spite of being an
indicator of an author’s own belief in his/her work and in the journal in which the work has
been published, is not well considered and is even punished by the editors of the ISI-
Thomson (Smith 1997). In addition, the abuse of self-citation is considered an indicator of
a journal suffering from scientific isolation, since it is enclosed within consultations of its
own publications and does not cite external publications (De Granda Orive et al. 2005). In
this sense, some authors have noticed a decrease in the percentage of national citations
throughout the twentieth century in favour of journals published in English and included in
the ISI-Thomson databases (Navarro 1996). Some authors use the term incest to refer to the
abuse of self-citation. Such is the case of the study by Schloegl and Stock (2004), who
found a positive correlation between the percentage of self-citations in German journals
and the Impact Factor.
The editorial committees of journals from non-English-speaking countries should
clearly define the type of professionals they wish their journal to be read by. The journals
that form the mouthpiece of a nation’s scientific society, or those that deal with problems
of a national, regional or local nature, should normally have a readership among the
professionals concerned; so, in these cases, publication in English only would not achieve
this goal. In this sense, some editors defend publication in the native language, arguing
that an important percentage of the citations they receive will be from journals published
in this field, in addition to the fact that they are publications which serve a community of
readers who use the native language (Aleixandre Benavent et al. 2007a; Gonza
´lez
Alcaide et al. 2010). The solution may sometimes be for societies to have two journals,
one with an international projection published in English and another national one
published in the native language (Aleixandre Benavent et al. 2007a). The version in
English should be electronic, which would greatly reduce the costs and allow universal
diffusion. As for its commercial distribution, journals should be edited by publishers who
guarantee their neutrality and independence with respect to extra-scientific commercial
interests.
G. Gonza
´lez-Alcaide et al.
123
Once English has been adopted as the language of publication, one of the problems
researchers from non-English-speaking countries find is that of the grammatical and lin-
guistic correction of the manuscripts, as these aspects have a direct influence on the
editorial decision, since it influences the correct communication of the results (Hines
2001). Some of the linguistic barriers non-English-speaking researchers have to overcome
have been described by Gannon (2008), of which we could point out the difficulties of
expressing exactly what they want to say, proposing future research guidelines and sharing
their best ideas with their competitors. A study by Vasconcelos et al. (2008) concluded that
Latin American research works with a good knowledge of written English received more
citations and had a higher h-index than those with a lower level of English. They concluded
that the language is an important factor in the quality of the scientific production and that
scientific policies should put more emphasis on improving the linguistic competence of
researchers. Countries such as Brazil, which have systems to promote quality improvement
in journals through an improvement of the language of the articles, have managed to
increase, in a sustained manner, the Impact Factor of their journals over recent years
(Meneghini and Packer 2007).
Non-English-speaking scientific journals in the ISI-Thomson databases, author
recognition and peripheral science in the developing world
Most publications included in the ISI-Thomson databases are journals edited in English,
while the presence of other languages is small. Also, with respect to the degree of citation,
the rankings are headed by English language journals (Gonza
´lez de Dios et al. 2011). The
defence of German against English has been the subject of numerous articles of opinion
published in German, Austrian and Swiss scientific journals. Some authors comment on the
difficulty of journals written in German reaching higher Impact Factors than one due to the
fact that this indicator is fundamentally given to journals published in English (Edouard
2009); while others, even in the 1990s, were calling attention to the fact that the Impact
Factor was eliminating the German language (Haller et al. 1997; Rempen and Rempen
1998). This aspect can also be extended to other languages such as Spanish or French
(Aldrete 2010; Gonza
´lez Alcaide et al. 2010).
It has been observed that the inclusion of a new journal in the ISI-Thomson database,
and the fact that it has an Impact Factor in the Journal Citation Reports, leads to an initial
increase in its Impact Factor of the years subsequent to its inclusion, as has occurred in the
case of the Spanish journals in the field of Clinical Medicine (Fig. 4). However, with a few
exceptions, this does not correspond to an increase in its relative position in the rankings
with respect to the rest of the publications in the field. In fact, stagnation or even a decrease
in the Impact Factor and the position in the rankings occupied by these journals has been
observed, in spite of the many strategies used by editors of these journals to translate the
contents to English (Table 1).
This same phenomenon has been observed by Wang and cols. (2007) with respect to ten
journals edited in China and published in English. This was attributed to their reduced
internationalization and to the fact that they are not attractive publications for the authors
to send their best quality work to, because of their localized nature, scarce circulation and
reduced Impact Factors. This same phenomenon has been noted by Yamazaki and Zhang
(1997) with respect to Japanese journals published in English.
At this point, we should also mention the fact that authors from some non-English-
speaking countries of Europe and from such geographical areas as Latin America and
The Impact Factor
123
South-East Asia have a lower degree of citation than authors from the USA, in spite of
publishing in international journals in English. Concerning this aspect, Aldrete (2010)
presents a list of innovations and outstanding scientific contributions in the field of
Medicine and Anaesthesiology, published by Latin American authors in journals with an
international circulation, which were undervalued and even avoided in later reviews. Other
works also point to a lower recognition of the scientific merits of Latin American authors,
measured by a lower degree of citation, in spite of the fact that, in many cases, the work
was published in prestigious scientific journals and in English (Meneghini et al. 2008). This
would suggest that, independently of the language and journal of publication, greater
recognition is given to the contributions of researchers from countries with a higher sci-
entific development, situated in the mainstream of Science; as opposed to those researchers
and the scientific contributions from less advanced countries, in spite of the fact that their
discoveries had been made first, before those from the researchers of the more developed
countries. In this sense, it is significant that many reviews, with no methodological jus-
tification, avoid publications that are not in English, in spite of the fact that these works
have abstracts and key words in English.
As for the developing countries, due to diverse factors, including the low impact and
diffusion levels of their scientific journals, the Science they produce has received the
qualification of ‘‘peripheral science’’ or ‘‘science lost in the developing world’’ (Stol-
erman and Stenius 2008), where scientists take much longer to achieve international
recognition and society does not benefit from their achievements until much later. In
order to solve this problem, initiatives encouraging the creation of information systems
and databases specialised in journals from these countries have been started. This idea is
based, fundamentally, on the creation of virtual systems attached to the Open Access
movement. The citation of works deposited in open repositories has been analysed by
Moed (2008).
Fig. 4 Evolution of the Impact Factors of Spanish journals in the field of Clinical Medicine included in
Science Citation Index-Expanded database for over 10 years (black/blue English language journals; grey/red
Spanish language journals). Asterisks indicates Bilingual journals (Spanish and English). (Color figure online)
G. Gonza
´lez-Alcaide et al.
123
Table 1 Ranking of the Spanish language journals in the field of Clinical Medicine included in Journal Citation Reports database
Journal Ranking in Journal Citation Reports (position 1–4 determined from the quartiles distribution 25, 50 and 75% of journals)
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Actas Espan
˜olas de Psiquiatrı
´a75of81
(4)
80 of 88
(4)
82 of 87
(4)
88 of 90
(4)
88 of 94
(4)
91 of 94
(4)
90 of 94
(4)
91 of 101
(4)
101 of 117
(4)
103 of 128
(4)
Archivos de Bronconeumologı
´a––27of31
(4)
27 of 34
(4)
23 of 33
(3)
22 of 34
(3)
26 of 34
(4)
27 of 40
(3)
23 of 43
(3)
–
Enfermedades Infecciosas y
Microbiologı
´a Clı
´nica
––37of41
(4)
37 of 41
(4)
39 of 43
(4)
41 of 47
(4)
46 of 50
(4)
43 of 51
(4)
47 of 57
(4)
46 of 58
(4)
Medicina Clı
´nica 41 of 112
(2)
44 of 107
(2)
41 of 102
(2)
48 of 103
(2)
49 of 105
(2)
44 of 103
(2)
50 of 100
(2)
62 of 107
(3)
68 of 133
(3)
64 of 153
(2)
Nefrologı
´a39of44
(4)
36 of 47
(4)
42 of 49
(4)
45 of 52
(4)
47 of 51
(4)
48 of 55
(4)
49 of 55
(4)
51 of 57
(4)
54 of 63
(4)
60 of 69
(4)
Neurocirugı
´a 135 of 139
(4)
133 of 141
(4)
134 of 141
(4)
128 of 139
(4)
132 of 139
(4)
122 of 137
(4)
131 of 139
(4)
142 of 148
(4)
155 of 167
(4)
171 of 188
(4)
Neurologı
´a – – 115 of 135
(4)
120 of 140
(4)
128 of 148
(4)
131 of 147
(4)
121 of 146
(4)
132 of 156
(4)
148 of 167
(4)
164 of 185
(4)
Revista Clı
´nica Espan
˜ola 93 of 112
(4)
86 of 107
(4)
93 of 102
(4)
91 of 103
(4)
93 of 105
(4)
83 of 103
(4)
72 of 100
(3)
81 of 107
(4)
98 of 133
(3)
90 of 153
(3)
Revista Espan
˜ola de Cardiologı
´a50of65
(4)
45 of 66
(3)
48 of 70
(3)
28 of 71
(2)
31 of 72
(2)
26 of 74
(2)
28 of 74
(2)
27 of 79
(2)
34 of 95
(2)
52 of 114
(3)
Revista Espan
˜ola de Enfermedades
Digestivas
41 of 47
(4)
44 of 45
(4)
45 of 47
(4)
43 of 46
(4)
45 of 46
(4)
44 of 48
(4)
45 of 50
(4)
45 of 55
(4)
56 of 66
(4)
58 of 72
(4)
Revista de Neurologı
´a 124 of 136
(4)
124 of 138
(4)
132 of 135
(4)
133 of 140
(4)
135 of 148
(4)
132 of 147
(4)
126 of 146
(4)
126 of 156
(4)
119 of 167
(3)
135 of 185
(3)
The Impact Factor
123
Scientific policies
The scientific policies articulated in some non-English-speaking countries such as Spain
have had a decisive impact on the increase in scientific productivity, since their valuation
agencies have taken productivity and citation parameters of journals indexed in the ISI-
Thomson databases as their reference. The adoption of these valuation criteria have marked
a fundamental milestone, in that they have stimulated the need for the scientific community
to publish in international journals. Nevertheless, this policy has had several negative
effects with respect to the national scientific publications, principally the undervaluation
of the Spanish journals. It has also had an influence on the adoption by researchers of
publication strategies guided, in many cases, by criteria concerning academic profitability;
or other ethically reproachable forms of behaviour, such as unjustified authorships, frag-
mentation, making duplicate or redundant publications, the alteration of the traditional
citation criteria, introducing unjustified self-citations, making directed citations or pur-
posely omitting relevant citations, all of which are factors that, together with other much
more damaging fraudulent scientific conduct, such as inventing, copying or falsifying the
published information, are not exclusive to Spanish scientific activity, but which are linked
to the pressure to publish as a competitive process in which publications constitute one of
the main reference points in the processes of scientific valuation and credit. The adoption
of the Journal Citation Reports as a reference on the valuation level marked the beginning
of an active debate among the Spanish research community concerning the suitability of
the Impact Factor as a valuation criterion, having stressed the need to consider other
criteria and the development of alternative or complementary projects (Gonza
´lez Alcaide
et al. 2008), since, in other countries, such strict valuation criteria, in which the publica-
tions have such weight with respect to evaluating scientists’ activity, have not been
adopted (Clapham 2005; Delgado Lo
´pez-Co
´zar et al. 2007). Finally, it should be pointed
out that the adoption of publications included in the ISI-Thomson as a reference, although it
has had a positive influence that favoured the increase in productivity in journals of
international diffusion, has had a more moderate influence in the case of citations. In this
sense, new policies, such as the encouragement of transnational collaboration, have
attempted to mitigate such an effect (Gonza
´lez Alcaide et al. 2012).
Frustrations concerning the Impact Factor
The literature on the Impact Factor is full of linguistic metaphors which are a faithful
reflection of the expressions of discouragement and the feelings of frustration of many
scientists concerning this indicator. The frustration appears when authors perceive an
imbalance between the value they give to their work and the scarce repercussions their
work attains in terms of impact and citations (Porcel and Aleixandre 2000;Pe
´rez 2000).
The scarce citation of national articles has been defined by some authors as an attitude
of ‘‘scientific auto-boycott’’ and of ‘‘submission to the North American power’’ (Ortega
Serrano et al. 1992). Some authors even wonder: ‘‘If the articles published in non-English-
speaking journals are neither known, read or cited, why do we write them?’’ (Porcel and
Aleixandre 2000; Aleixandre Benavent et al. 2007a).
On the other hand, some authors point out that the term ‘‘Impact Factor’’ is deceptive,
since it is a measure of the importance of a journal with respect to the set of articles that
have been published in it, and that it is used to measure the relative importance of the
researchers, the research programmes, and even the scientific institutions. Thus, they
G. Gonza
´lez-Alcaide et al.
123
recommend that this indicator’s name should be changed in accordance with its real
function, which is simply that of a ‘‘citation index’’ of a journal and nothing more (Hecht
et al. 1998; Williams 1998; Gensini and Conti 1999).
The valuation of publications and alternative indicators to the Impact Factor
The problems and limitations of the ISI-Thomson Impact Factor, and in particular the over-
representation of English language journals, have made the development of both alterna-
tive indicators and valuation instruments necessary.
Among the numerous alternative or complementary indicators that have been described
in the scientific literature, we could mention here the Adjusted Impact Factor,Cited Half-
life Impact Factor,Eurofactor,Disciplinary Impact Factor,Journal to Field Impact Score,
Journal International Index,H-index,Eigenfactor and G-index, among others (Aleixandre
et al. 2007b). These indicators have been described and analysed in comparative studies
which have generated an ample bibliography and debate concerning their suitability among
the research community (Matthew et al. 2008). Also, some large communications enter-
prises, such as Elsevier, Google and Microsoft, have launched their own indicators based
on the information available in their databases or in the web.
Among the new initiatives that bring together the development of an indicator and a
valuation platform for scientific journals, we can mention the SCImago Journal Rank
Indicator (SJR), accessible through the portal SCImago Journal and Country Rank (http://
www.scimagojr.com/). The SCImago group, dependent on the Spanish Research Center-
CSIC and various Spanish universities, dedicates the portal SCImago Journal and Country
Rank to the publication of several indicators using the information contained in the Scopus
database. The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is based on the PageRank of Google and aims
to become an alternative to the Impact Factor of ISI-Thomson. However, this indicator is
not completely satisfactory either, especially in certain disciplines (Scho
¨pfel and Prost
2008).
Google Scholar Citations (http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html) was
launched in July of 2011. It brings together the scientific production of researchers and shows
the number of citations for each item on a personal page. It presents three bibliometric
indicators: the total number of citations, the H-index and the i10 index (number of papers
with over ten citations). The information on the citations received and the production is
automatically updated as it is indexed by Google (Cabezas Clavijo and Torres-Salinas 2012).
Kousha and Thelwall (2006) have carried out an exploratory study of Google Scholar
Citations and Google Web/URL Citations in several disciplines.
Microsoft Academic Search (http://academic.research.microsoft.com/), available from
September of 2011, allows the creation of personal profiles based on the information
gathered by the search engine, providing more indicators and functions than those offered
by Google Scholar Citations, such as the possibility of seeing the context in which a paper
has been cited, following the scientific production of an institution, or exploring the col-
laborative network of a researcher and the relations via the citations (Cabezas Clavijo and
Torres-Salinas 2012).
In Latin America and the Caribbean we should mention the SciELO-Scientific Elec-
tronic Library Online (http://www.scielo.org/php/index.php), a system for the co-operative
electronic publication of scientific journals in Internet which aims to serve the scientific
communication needs of those countries, to ensure the visibility of and universal access to
its scientific literature, and to contribute to overcoming the abovementioned phenomenon
The Impact Factor
123
of ‘‘lost science’’. SciELO offers, in addition, indicators on the use and impact of the
scientific journals integrated in this system.
The Web of Knowledge’s bias in the coverage of national journals has, in some coun-
tries, encouraged national initiatives to cover these lagoons, particularly in the field of
Social Sciences and Humanities. They analyse citations using their own country’s journals
in order to obtain complementary indicators to those provided by ISI-Thomson. Several
citation analysis platforms have arisen in Spain, normally financed by public competitions,
such as the I
´
ndice de Impacto de las Revistas Espan
˜olas de Ciencias Sociales [Spanish
Social Science Journals Impact Index](IN-RECS) (http://ec3.ugr.es/in-recs), which was
later extended to humanities journals (INRECH) and legal sciences (INRECJ) (http://
ec3.ugr.es/in-recj) (Aleixandre et al. 2007b).
Conclusions
The Impact Factor of the ISI-Thomson is closely related to the journals of Anglo-American
origin, since they are the majority and they occupy the top places in the rankings of all
disciplines or fields of knowledge. The adoption of the Impact Factor as the valuation
criterion for scientific activities has favoured the consolidation of these publications and of
the English language in the diffusion of scientific knowledge. The vernacular languages
only conserve part of their importance in certain disciplines, such as Clinical Medicine or
Social Sciences and Humanities. The Impact Factor, and especially the use that is made of
it in many cases, constitutes a limitation or a condition for authors and scientific journals,
in which both are obliged to adopt decisions guided, in many cases, more by the rankings
than by objective, scientific criteria based, for example, on the contents of the journals or
on its potential readers, especially in non-English-speaking countries and in the said dis-
ciplines. In addition, the Impact Factor, invented over 50 years ago now, does not consider
some widely used practices among the scientific community concerning the development
of Internet as a means for the diffusion of knowledge. Thus, it would be plausible to look
for alternatives that can include the development of alternative indicators which take into
account the relative weight of citations due to language or country, or the development of
specific rankings with respect to the language of publication or to take into account such
factors as the visibility of the papers.
With a view to a better visibility of Science in both the national and international fields,
all the sectors involved should adopt measures. The editors of national, scientific non-
English-speaking journals could consider the possibility of publishing different journals, in
English and in their native language; the journal coverage of databases could be widened,
as well as introducing modifications in relation to the appropriate calculation of the bib-
liometric indicators they offer; and the national research and valuation agencies, for their
part, should encourage policies that contribute to overcoming the linguistic barriers of
scientific communication and increase the impact of their national journals, and in short, of
the Science generated in their countries. They should also adequately evaluate the scope
and implications of the use that is made of the bibliometric indicators instead of simply
applying them indiscriminately.
It would also be advisable to develop or improve citation databases in the European
Union and in geographical areas that are not included in the scientific e
´lite, databases that
would have a wide coverage of quality journals and which would allow an Impact Factor,
independent of the ISI-Thomson, to be created, one which could facilitate access to the
scientific literature of those countries. Such initiatives as the Google Scholar Citations,
G. Gonza
´lez-Alcaide et al.
123
Microsoft Academic Search and Scientific Electronic Library Online-SCIelo, are only the
tip of the iceberg of the new scenario generated by the development of Internet as a means
for the diffusion of knowledge and they should be used as instruments to assist in a more
objective and precise valuation of the results of scientific activities and researchers.
Acknowledgment We are grateful to Maxima Bolan
˜os-Pizarro, who provided data from her doctoral
thesis about language use in Cardiology field.
References
Aldrete, A. J. (2010). Will the controversy about publishing in Spanish or in English be solved on the basis
of academic merits? Revista Colombiana de Anestesiologı
´
a, 38(3), 363–375.
Aleixandre Benavent, R., Valderrama Zuria
´n, J. C., Alonso Arroyo, A., Miguel Dasit, A., Gonza
´lez de Dios, J.,
& De Granda Orive, J. I. (2007a). Espan
˜ol vs ingle
´s como idioma de publicacio
´n de Neurologı
´a.
Neurologı
´
a, 22(1), 19–26.
Aleixandre Benavent, R., Valderrama Zuria
´n, J. C., & Gonza
´lez Alcaide, G. (2007b). El factor de impacto
de las revistas cientı
´ficas: limitaciones e indicadores alternativos. El Profesional de la Informacio
´n,
16(1), 4–11.
Bakewell, D. (1992). Publish in English or perish. Nature, 356, 648.
Bolan
˜os Pizarro, M. (2012). Ana
´lisis de la productividad, colaboracio
´n e impacto cientı
´
fico de la Cardi-
ologı
´
a espan
˜ola (1999–2008). Valencia: Universitat de Vale
`ncia.
Bordons, M., & Go
´mez, I. (2004). Towards a single language in science? A Spanish view. Serials,17(2),
189–195. Accessed 25 Jan 2012 from http://www.uksg.org/serials/online.asp.
Borsuk, R. M., Budden, A. E., Leimu, R., Aarssen, L. W., & Lortie, C. J. (2009). The influence of author
gender, national language and number of authors on citation rate in ecology. The Open Ecology
Journal, 2, 25–28.
Bracho-Riquelme, R. L., Pescador-Salas, N., & Reyes-Romero, M. A. (1997). Bibliometric repercussions of
adopting English as the language of publication. Revista de Investigacio
´n Clı
´
nica, 49(5), 369–372.
Bracho-Riquelme, R. L., Pescador-Salas, N., & Reyes-Romero, M. A. (1999). Change from French to
English and its effect upon the impact factor and ranking of the Pasteur journals. Journal of Infor-
mation Science, 25(5), 413–417.
Cabezas Clavijo, A., & Torres-Salinas, D. (2012). Google scholar citations y la emergencia de nuevos actores en
la evaluacio
´ndelainvestigacio
´n. Resource document. Nota Thinkepi.http://ec3noticias.blogspot.
com/2011/12/thinkepi-google-scholar-citations-y-la.html. Accessed 28 Feb 2012.
Clapham, P. (2005). Publish or perish. BioScience, 55(5), 390–391.
De Granda Orive, J. I., Aleixandre Benavent, R., & Villanueva Serrano, S. (2005). >Que
´significa para una
revista cientı
´fica disponer de factor de impacto? Archivos de Bronconeumologı
´
a, 41(7), 404–405.
Delgado Lo
´pez-Co
´zar, E., Torres Salinas, D., & Rolda
´nLo
´pez, A. (2007). El fraude de la ciencia:
reflexiones a partir del caso Hwang. El Profesional de la Informacio
´n, 16(2), 143–150.
Edouard, B. (2009). Who cites non-English-language pharmaceutical articles? Annals of Pharmacology
Therapy, 43(3), 549–550.
Ferna
´ndez, E., & Plasencia, A. (2002). Contamos contigo. >Contamos tambie
´n con tus citas? Gaceta
Sanitaria, 16, 288–290.
Filion, K. B., & Pless, I. B. (2008). Factors related to the frequency of citation of epidemiologic publica-
tions. Epidemiologic Perspectives and Innovation, 5, 3. doi:10.1186/1742-5573-5-3.
Gannon, F. (2008). Language barriers. EMBO Reports, 9, 207.
Gensini, G. F., & Conti, A. A. (1999). The impact factor: A factor of impact or the impact of a (sole) factor?
The limits of a bibliometric indicator as a candidate for an instrument to evaluate scientific production.
Annali Italiani di Medicina Interna, 14(2), 130–133.
Gonza
´lez Alcaide, G., Castellano Go
´mez, M., Valderrama Zuria
´n, J. C., & Aleixandre Benavent, R. (2008).
Literatura cientı
´fica de autores espan
˜oles sobre ana
´lisis de citas y factor de impacto en Biomedicina
(1981–2005). Revista Espan
˜ola de Documentacio
´n Cientı
´
fica, 31(3), 344–365.
Gonza
´lez Alcaide, G., Mosbah-Natansonm, S., & Gingras, Y. (2010). Use of Spanish in scientific publi-
cations: Neurology in the context of clinical medicine and Spanish scientific journals. Neurologı
´
a,
25(3), 201–203.
Gonza
´lez Alcaide, G., Valderrama Zuria
´n, J. C., & Aleixandre Benavent, R. (2012). Ana
´lisis del proceso
de internacionalizacio
´n de la investigacio
´n espan
˜ola en ciencia y tecnologı
´a (1980–2007). Revista
Espan
˜ola de Documentacio
´n Cientı
´
fica, 35(1), 94–118.
The Impact Factor
123
Gonza
´lez de Dios, J., Gonza
´lez Alcaide, G., Valderrama-Zuria
´n, J. C., & Aleixandre Benavent, R. (2011).
An approach to the impact of biomedical journals in pediatrics: Study of the bibliometric indicators in
the journal citation reports-Science Citation Index 2009. Pediatria de Atencion Primaria, 13(49),
63–82.
Haller, U., Hepp, H., & Reinold, E. (1997). The inappropriate influence of the ‘‘impact factor’’ as tool for
scientific communication. Gynakologisch-Geburtshilfliche Rundschau, 37, 117–118.
Hasse, W., & Fischer, R. J. (2010). Citation characteristics of German authors in ‘‘Der Chirurg’’: hegemony
of the impact factor. Der Chirurg, 81(4), 361–364.
Hecht, F., Hecht, B. K., & Sandberg, A. A. (1998). The journal ‘‘impact factor’’: A misnamed, misleading,
misused measure. Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics, 104(2), 77–81.
Heras, M., Avanzas, P., Bayes-Genis, A., Pe
´rez de Isla, L., & Sanchis, J. (2010). Nueva etapa editorial
y nuevos proyectos. Revista Espan
˜ola de Cardiologı
´
a, 63(7), 865–868.
Hines, P. J. (2001). A life in science, editing, and writing. Plant Physiology, 126(4), 1347–1348.
Kousha, K., & Thelwall, M. (2006). Google Scholar Citations and Google Web/URL Citations: a multi-
discipline exploratory analysis. In: International Workshop on Webometrics, Informetrics and
Scientometrics and Seventh COLLNET Meeting, Nancy (France), May 10–12. Accessed Jan 25 2012
from http://hdl.handle.net/10760/7641.
Leimu, R., & Koricheva, J. (2005). Does scientific collaboration increase the impact of ecological articles?
BioScience, 55(5), 438–443.
Matthew, E., Falagas, V. D., Kouranos, R., Arencibia, J., & Karageorgopoulos, D. E. (2008). Comparison of
SCImago journal rank indicator with journal impact factor. The FASEB Journal, 22(22), 2623–2628.
Meneghini, R., & Packer, A. L. (2007). Is there science beyond English? EMBO Reports, 8(2), 112–116.
Meneghini, R., Packer, A. L., & Nassi-Calo
`, L. (2008). Articles by Latin American authors in prestigious
journals have fewer citations. PLoS ONE,3(11), e3804. Accessed Jan 25 2012 from http://www.
plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003804.
Moed, H. F. (2008). The effect of ‘‘Open Access’’ upon citation impact: an analysis of ArXiv’s. Condensed
Matter Section. Accessed Jan 25 2012 from http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0611/0611060.pdf.
Mueller, P. S., Murali, N. S., Cha, S. S., Erwin, P. F., & Ghosh, A. K. (2006). The association between
impact factors and language of general internal medicine journals. Swiss Med Wkly, 136(27–28),
441–443.
Navarro, F. A. (1996). Englisch oder Deutsch? Die Sprache der Medizin aufgrund der in der Deutschen
Medizinischen Wochenschrift erschienenen Literaturangaben (1920 bis 1995). Deutsche Medizinische
Wochenschrift, 121, 1561–1566.
Ortega Serrano, J., Martı
´nez Leo
´n, J., & Sala, Palau C. (1992). Autoboicot cientı
´fico entre los cirujanos
espan
˜oles: >por que
´no nos citamos? Cirugı
´
a Espan
˜ola, 51, 3–7.
Pe
´rez, V. (2000). Tenemos lo que merecemos. Psiquiatrı
´
a Biolo
´gica, 7(2), 49–50.
Poomkottayil, D., Bornstein, M. M., & Sendi, P. (2011). Lost in translation: The impact of publication
language on citation frequency in the scientific dental literature. Swiss Medical Weekly, 141, w13148.
doi:10.4414/smw.2011.13148.
Porcel, A., & Aleixandre, R. (2000). >Tenemos lo que merecemos? Ana
´lisis de las citas espan
˜olas en la
revista Psiquiatrı
´a Biolo
´gica (1994–1999). Psiquiatrı
´
a Biolo
´gica, 7, 242–248.
Rempen, A., & Rempen, A. (1998). Is the ‘‘impact factor’’ killing the German language? Gynakologisch-
Geburtshilfliche Rundschau, 38, 54.
Schloegl, C., & Stock, W. G. (2004). Impact and relevance of LIS journals: A scientometric analysis of
international and German-language LIS journals: Citation analysis versus reader survey. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(13), 1155–1168.
Scho
¨pfel, J., & Prost, H. (2008). Comparison of SCImago Journal Rank Indicator (SJR) with JCR journal
impact factor (IF) for French journals. The FASEB Journal, 22(8), 2623–2628.
Smith, R. (1997). Journal accused of manipulating impact factor. British Medical Journal, 314(7079), 461.
Stolerman, I. P., & Stenius, K. (2008). The language barrier and institutional provincialism in science. Drug
and Alcohol Dependence, 92(1–3), 1–2.
Te
´llez-Zenteno, J. F., Morales-Buenrostro, L. E., & Estan
˜ol, B. (2007). Impact factor of Latin American
medical journals. Revista Me
´dica de Chile, 135(4), 480–487.
Tucker, J. D., Chang, H., Brandt, A., Gao, X., Lin, M., Luo, J., et al. (2011). An empirical analysis of
overlap publication in Chinese language and English research manuscripts. PLoS ONE, 6(7), e22149.
Vasconcelos, S., Sorenson, M. M., Leta, J., Sant’Ana, M. C., & Batista, P. D. (2008). Researchers’ writing
competence: A bottleneck in the publication of Latin-American science? EMBO Report, 9(8), 700–702.
Wang, S., Wang, H., & Weldon, P. R. (2007). Bibliometric analysis of English-language academic journals
of China and their internationalization. Scientometrics, 73(3), 331–343.
G. Gonza
´lez-Alcaide et al.
123
Williams, G. (1998). Misleading, unscientific, and unjust: the United Kingdom’s research assessment
exercise. British Medical Journal, 316(7137), 1079–1082.
Winkmann, G., Schlutius, S., & Schweim, H. G. (2002). Citation rates of medical German-language journals
in English-language papers: Do they correlate with the Impact Factor, and who cites? Deutsche
Medizinische Wochenschrift, 127(4), 138–143.
Yamazaki, S., & Zhang, H. (1997). Internationalization of the English-language journals in Japan in life
sciences. Nippon seirigaku zasshi. Journal of the Physiological Society of Japan, 59(2), 98–104.
The Impact Factor
123
