Yesterday I posted the message below to the
LIS-Nursing email list and today received a
comprehensive response showing that others have similar related concerns and some of the action to try to improve the listing of nursing journals in citation reports.
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I wonder if any of you can help.
As part of our planning for the 2008 Research Asssessment Exercise,faculty academics have been asked to review their publications to seewhich may be suitable for submission in the next RAE, with particularconsideration of journal impact factors - and to submit their potentialpublications to journals in ways which may maximise their rating whenmthey are reviewed.
Our local librarian has kindly pointed me to the "Web of Science"journal citation reports for impact factors & to check how many timesindividual papers have been cited by others. He has kindly producedlists of the top journals, by impact factor, for relevant areas from the"2003 ISI Journal Citation reports".
I've also looked at some US work at
http://nahrs.library.kent.edu/resource/reports/keyjrnls_intro2001ed.pdf&
http://nahrs.library.kent.edu/resource/reports/keyjrnls_chart2001ed.pdfIt appears that many UK nursing journals do not appear in these impactfactor listings - does anyone have other sources or methods to identifyimpact factors, or other significant metrics, which could be used in thecompilation of these sorts of publications lists?
Additionally any journals which cover nursing education, communication,health informatics etc which might not be considered "pure nursing"might fall on the boundaries between several assessment panels &therefore ranking may be more difficult.
Another area which is particularly significant to me, is clarifying howelectronic publications, databases etc can be included in the RAEsubmission & how they are likely to be judged?
I understand that the RAE panels are just being formed & may not yethave clarified or communicated their "judging criteria", but if anyonehas any early insights or thoughts on this, I would welcome yourcomments.
Rod