EGRU-blog

Journal impact factors can be rather sensitive to intentional boosting efforts by journals themselves. With extensive self-citation of articles, journals can increase their impact factor in the following years. Thompson Reuters has already paid attention on this, and sanctions have followed. Some journals have even been banned from receiving IF-ranking due to intentional manipulations – bad news both for the publisher and the authors. But what then constitutes an intentional boosting attempt?

Consider for instance this: for the second year in row, Molecular Ecology publishes ‘a retrospective’ which cites (heavily) on papers published in this journal during the preceding year. While someone might speculate this to be an deliberate attempt to boost journal’s impact factor, it is also true that this type of retrospect can be honest, well motivated journalism. It exposes research trends and what the journal considers to be essentials of its scope. Someone might even say that silly are the journals which are not playing this card. Apart of the advertisement value for papers published on the journal’s pages, one takes home the added benefit of the increased impact factor.

As in the last years retrospect, also this years Molecular Ecology retrospect features citations to some EGRU-papers.

Hannu’s work with stickelebacks is mentioned: ‘Analysis of microsatellite and indel genotypes in sticklebacks found strong selection at Eda in populations adapted to fresh water, as expected, and also at two previously unexamined chromosomal regions (Makinen et al. 2008).’

Same goes with Cano’s paper on sex-biased dispersal: ‘Population genetic approaches are increasingly used to examine sex bias in dispersal patterns in a wide variety of species. Male-biased dispersal was found in three-spined sticklebacks (Cano et al. 2008)‘.

In the climate change context, our review receives very favorable comment: ‘In their insightful review, Gienapp et al. (2008) question the oft-cited evidence for microevolution in response to new conditions, pointing out that while many studies report phenotypic change, very few actually demonstrate that genetic evolution has occurred.’

Nice. The holidays seem to be well deserved – Merry Christmas to all!

Rieseberg L, T Vines & N Kane 2009. Editorial and retrospective 2008. Molecular Ecology, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2008.4032_1.x