New Delhi: Over 50 academic journals have been delisted from Clarivate’s Web of Science (WoS), a widely used global research database, for not meeting quality selection criteria. The move comes as a big blow to some of the world’s most reputed, high-impact publishers, like MDPI, Springer, BMJ and Wiley.
The journals were identified using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool.
WoS provides access to a comprehensive collection of academic journals, conference proceedings and books in various fields of study. It is produced by Clarivate Analytics, a global information services company.
Researchers and academics extensively use WoS as a reliable and trusted source of scholarly information. It is used for citation analysis, measuring research impact and identifying important trends in scientific and academic research.
In a blog post last week, Nandita Quaderi, editor-in-chief & vice president, Web of Science, said that they had invested in a new, internally developed AI tool to help identify characteristics that indicate that a journal may no longer meet the quality criteria.
“This technology has substantially improved our ability to identify and focus our re-evaluation efforts on journals of concern. At the start of the year, more than 500 journals were flagged. Our investigations are ongoing and thus far, more than 50 of the flagged journals have failed our quality criteria and have subsequently been delisted,” Quaderi said.
More journals are expected to be delisted in the future. “We will continue to identify journals of concern and de-list any journal which fails to meet our quality criteria,” Quaderi further said.
While Clarivate did not publish the list of journals that were delisted, independent researchers and news portals have identified them by sifting through the new database.
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The ‘IF’
Among those delisted is the MDPI’s International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. In terms of the number of articles published annually, this journal is the second-largest in the world. It published over 16,800 articles in 2022.
In a twitter thread, French researcher Paolo Crosetto explained why the move was significant. “Mega journals aren’t usually chosen for their editorial rigor … but because they give you a reputation badge that says “high IF (Impact Factor),” one of his tweets read.
Ok this is big.
Web of Science just removed the MDPI flagship journal IJERPH from their lists. This means IJERPH has no more an Impact Factor.
Why is this big? What are the implications? 🧵 pic.twitter.com/xcL4IxrOAJ
— Paolo Crosetto (@PaoloCrosetto) March 22, 2023
Impact Factor (IF) is a measure used to evaluate the importance and prestige of a particular academic journal. It is a quantitative measure that reflects the average number of citations to articles published in a journal over a specified period of time.
In other words, IF is a measure of how often articles published in a journal are cited by other researchers.
According to Crosetto, delisting by WoS strips the journal of its IF — taking away the very reason researchers would want to submit their papers to it.
Among those delisted are also 20 journals published by Hindawi, a publisher recently acquired by Wiley.
Earlier this month, Wiley had acknowledged an annual revenue loss to the tune of $9 million, after it paused the Hindawi special issues publishing programme.
The programme was suspended temporarily due to the presence of compromised articles in certain special issues. Last year, more than 500 papers were retracted by Hindawi and Wiley after they identified a network of reviewers manipulating the process.
Other journals that were delisted include Elsevier’s Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, Springer’s Nanoscale Research Letters and Wiley’s Journal of Historical Sociology.
(Edited by Geethalakshmi Ramanathan)
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