Nature slips further from pole position

Nature, for long the top dog of scientific journals, has slipped down the ratings as judged by impact factor Richard Gallagher reports in his blog at The Scientist.

In 2004 it was the top journal with an impact factor of 31.9, then slipped marginally behind Science and Cell in 2005. But the latest figures, for 2006, show a further slip: Science comes in at 30.0, Cell at 29.2 and Nature at 26.7.

The numbers are calculated as the total number of citations in the year 2006 to papers published in the years 2004 and 2005, divided by the number of papers published in 2004 and 2005. That's three-and-a-half fewer citations on average for a Nature paper versus a Science paper.

The usual government health warning about impact factors applies: if they tell you what you already know then they're probably correct; if they contradict what you expect then feel free to ignore them.

Expect to see more review articles in Nature in the next couple of years - review articles attract disproportionately higher numbers of citation than research articles so they are a simple way to bump up a journal's impact factor.

New websites from Nature

Nature are launching new websites right left and centre at the moment. They have just announced two new services:

Nature Precedings is for the things in life that come before, or support, the published paper. You’re encouraged to upload and view slides, posters, white papers, unpublished manuscripts and other such material. Users can download the documents, vote and comment on them. As the site is brand new, they’re looking for early adopters and to upload files and test out the systems – so have a go. The idea of this new site is discussed in a news item in The Scientist.

Scintilla is a website you can customize to display the latest content from your favorite news sources, science blogs, journals, podcasts and the various other media that make up the increasingly diverse ecology of scientific information. You can rate, recommend and find similar items.

Elsevier abandons arms trade

Elsevier intends to stop organizing weapons exhibitions by the end of 2007, the publishing giant announced last week. After a long campaign by scientists and medics (reported here in March and April) Elsevier have decided that "the defence shows are no longer compatible with Reed Elsevier's position as a leading publisher of scientific, medical, legal and business content."

Chemical structure and gene ontology information in RSS

RSS feeds from Royal Society of Chemistry journals will also display ontology terms and compound details, including the 2D image. Users will be able to see at a glance whether the paper is relevant to their research. In addition, hidden coding within the RSS feed allows the metadata to be read by machine.

This is a part of the RSC's Project Prospect - aimed at enhancing the chemical and biochemical information available in RSC journal articles.

New guidelines for figures for BioMed Central journals

BioMed Central have issued improved figure preparation guidelines for articles submitted to their journals.

There is also an article in their blog asking for user feedback on these new guidelines.

Structured abstracts and text mining

A letter in today's Nature calls for journals to move to structured abstracts. These would allow text-mining software to access articles. The abstract would include:

1. list of entities (genes, proteins etc)
2. list of main results described using controlled vocabulary (eg "Protein A binds to Protein B")
3. Evidence codes to show how obtained (eg "affinity purification")

For an example of text mining see Textpresso.

How to speed up peer review?

Correspondence in PLoS Biology suggests a way to give peer reviewers an incentive to review manuscripts more speedily.

Whenever a reviewer sends in a review, the date is logged... Next to the date the editor enters a positive or negative value that indicates the relative timeliness of the review: negative values for reviews arriving before the deadline, and positive values for those arriving afterwards. Reviewers that turn in their reviews late are punished, whereas those that arrive on time are rewarded: for every day since receipt of the manuscript for review plus the number of days past the deadline, the reviewer's next personal submission to the journal will be held in editorial limbo for twice as long before it is sent for review. Journals reward timely reviewers by sending their manuscripts out for review as soon as they come in, and if accepted, by pushing their papers high up into the publication queue.

This is certainly a thought-provoking idea! The authors recognise some of the possible pitfalls and address these in their letter. They argue that their propsed solution is based on "the logic of economic incentives and the evolutionary origins of human nature".

There are some readers' responses to the suggestion, and also some further feedback on the new EMBO blog.

Elsevier petitioned over arms trade involvement

More than 1,300 scientists, academics, and health care professionals have now signed a petition that calls for publishing giant Reed Elsevier to abandon its involvement in international arms exhibitions, which it organizes through its subsidiary, Reed Exhibitions.

The Scientist reports on two online petitions that have been signed by a wide range of people, including Michael Atiyah, former president of the Royal Society.

Retractions

The Scientist has interesting article on the muddy waters of language used for retractions and expressions of concern about papers. This includes a "Glossary of retractions".

Lancet, Elsevier and the arms trade

The Lancet has a proud tradition as a medical journal of record dating back to 1823. The medical library world was shocked when in 1991 the title was purchased by Elsevier, a major commercial publisher. However, Lancet has continued to thrive under its new owners and has benefitted from its inclusion on Elsevier's very reliable ScienceDirect online journal platform and their investment in digitising all issues back to the very first 1823 issue.

Since 2005 a fresh controversy has been rumbling on and now seems to have come to a head. Elsevier is not just the world's biggest scientific publisher, but also part of a larger commercial group, Reed-Elsevier. In their business publishing arm sits Reed Exhibitions - a leading organiser of business exhibitions and trade shows, including arms trade exhibitions. This sits rather uneasily with Elsevier's medical journal publishing activity.

Back in 2005 The Lancet's editorial board called on Reed-Elsevier "to divest itself of all business interests that threaten human, and especially civilian, health and well-being". This has not happened. As a leading opinion former in the medical world the editors of The Lancet are in an uncomfortable position, as the BMJ noted last week. In today's issue there are three pages of letters protesting this link between medicine and the arms trade, and the editors set out their position.

The issue is also featured in today's Guardian.

Journals becoming smarter

Journals published by the Royal Society of Chemistry are to be enhanced so that their data can be read, indexed and intelligently searched by machine, a first step towards the “semantic web”. Readers will be able to click on named compounds and scientific concepts in an electronic journal article to download structures, understand topics, or link through to electronic databases; compounds and ontology terms will be published as RSS feeds enabling automated discovery of relevant research. This initiative, called "Project Prospect" commenced 1st Feb 2007.

http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/News/launch.asp

Microfluidics OA journal

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has recently launched its first open-access journal, Biomicrofluidics. They say "Open access is good for interdisciplinary titles such as this one. Being open access enables anyone to look at the full text. If this was a subscription title it might not be high on the list of priorities for subject-specific librarians because only a few researchers from their disciplines might be involved in this area." The journal will also have an associated blog.

http://bmf.aip.org/

New journals in systems biology and in signalling

BioMedCentral have launched a couple of new journals:

• BMC Systems Biology (see also press release)
• Journal of Molecular Signalling

Articles published online in these journals are free to read.

EMBO journals turn hybrid

EMBO have announced that their two journals, EMBO Journal and EMBO Reports are to become hybrid OA journals from 1 Jan 2007. In other words, they will accept open-access articles subject to payment of a publication fee. The open-access option will be available to all authors submitting original research on or after 1 January 2007. The publication fee will be €2,000 plus VAT (where applicable). Articles published with a publication fee will be clearly identified in the online and print editions of the journal with an open-access icon.

Full press release here:
http://www.embo.org/about_embo/press/open_access.html