How does my research compare?
Here our communications ambassador Christopher Stubenrauch, a post doc at Monash University, shares his thoughts on research metrics and impact.
Picture a ‘sliding doors’ moment, where in one scenario I publish in Nature and in the other I publish the same article in a (seemingly) “lesser” journal. To a funding body, that is all the difference in the world, but you and I know there’s no real difference. Just look at Hans Krebs, who submitted a short manuscript about his discovery of the citric acid cycle to Nature in 1937, which was rejected 4 days later by the editors. No need to say he later published that work in a “lesser” journal, which ultimately led to him earning the 1953 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Whether you’re talking about project feasibility, your prominence within a certain discipline, or who you are as a researcher, your publication history gives an interesting snapshot into your career. In most applications for funding or prizes, not only is your track record itself important, but how you talk about it can be the difference between success and failure. I wish it was as simple as “the science speaks for itself”, but currently, funding bodies will typically judge the quality of your work, not on its merits, but on its metrics.
Now I don’t want to bore you with the fine details of each bibliometric, because there are enough sessions organised by Universities and libraries to cover those, but I do want to suggest an additional approach to supplement your bibliometrics. As scientists, I know anecdotes are not looked upon favourably, but I’ve read a couple of examples of grant and prize applications and seen publication lists that just mention journal impact factors that are less than one. I won’t criticise those journals per se, but there was no context about the journal’s importance within their field. How does an examiner that sits outside of your area of expertise compare your research to someone in a different discipline, maybe not even a scientific discipline? Although certain bibliometric scores (like the impact factor) are oft touted as being capable of comparing the quality of research across disciplines, it simply isn’t so. The context you should strive for therefore is about how your research sits within your specific discipline: Microbiology, for example.
“How do you add context?” I hear you asking. It’s as simple as talking about how the journal ranks within your field; maybe even summarising that you have published ‘x’ number of times in the first quartile (top 25%) of journals in your discipline. Even picking the webtool that ranks your work can paint a different picture, for example: using the two main webtools, Journal Citation Reports (JCR, https://jcr.clarivate.com) and SCImago Journal and Country Rank (SCImago, https://scimagojr.com), the “Microbiology” journal category alone had very different rankings. SCImago contains 14 more “Microbiology” journals (i.e. 147 cf. 133), and only Nature Reviews Microbiology had the same rank (number 1) between both webtools. As a case study, let’s pick Food Microbiology. On JCR, it is rank 37/133, which places it within the second quartile (top 50%) of “Microbiology” outputs; however, SCImago rank it 33/147, placing it within the top quartile (top 25%) of “Microbiology” journals. Thinking more strategically, considering “Food” is one of Australia’s 9 Research Priorities, you could pick the “Food Science & Technology” (JCR) or “Food Science” (SCImago) categories, where JCR ranks it slightly higher 14/212 (first quartile) than SCImago at 19/281 (first quartile). So, depending on the discipline you wanted to highlight, you could be a little bit more strategic in choosing the webtool that ranks your journal.
“How you use them is up to you, but…”
I didn’t want to give a comprehensive list of bibliometrics, but I did want to conclude by saying that there are many different levels of metrics, including journal-level, author-level, and even article-level metrics. How you use them is up to you, but it should always come back to how you are contributing to your discipline, your research institute, and maybe even Australia’s research priorities. The best research will always be found and given its due recognition in the long run, but how you talk about it now is important in establishing your place within our Australian research community.
L: linkedin.com/in/christopher-stubenrauch-702a5a54/
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