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EDUCATIONAL
SCIENCES
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas: a vision from Scienciometry
Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas: una mirada desde la Cienciometría
Ray Valdés Balbín,I Jorge A Fundora-Mirabal,I Lissette Cárdenas-de Baños,I Daysi Bencomo-Díaz,I Cristóbal González-Losada,I Josmel Pacheco-Mendoza,II Alberto Juan Dorta-ContrerasI
IUniversidad
de Ciencias Médicas de La Habana. La Habana, Cuba.
IIUniversidad
de San Ignacio de Loyola. Lima, Perú.
This
paper is a translation to English of its original version, available on:
http://www.revhabanera.sld.cu/index.php/rhab/article/view/1775/1586
ABSTRACT
Introduction:
Teamwork among editors, director, and the Editorial Board is essential in order
to guarantee a satisfactory editorial process. The main purpose
of this association is to publish papers with an adequate scientific-methodological
rigor, which demands a great effort in order to maintain quality, guarantee
scientific validity, and protect potential readers who have access to the final
product.
Objective: To characterize
the Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas from metric indicators.
Material and methods:
A scientific and metric study of this publication was carried out from 2002
to 2016. We evaluated bibliographic variables published by Publish or Perish,
and metric indicators provided by SciELO and SciELO Citation Index.
Results: The journal
has an h-index of 18, with more than a thousand published authors. The average
number of authors per article is 3 and there is a favorable balance between
the distribution of cited and non-cited articles. It makes more citations
than the ones it receives, and it does not have a high number of self-cites.
Conclusions: The
Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas has shown results that place
it among the best positioned journals with health-related issues in greater
coverage databases, which is demonstrated from the analysis of its metric indicators.
Keywords: scientific production, visibility, Scientometry, bibliometrics, journal, metric indicators, citations.
RESUMEN
Introducción:
Para garantizar un adecuado proceso editorial es necesario la asociación
de los editores, director y comité editorial, quienes tienen como principal
propósito publicar manuscritos con un adecuado rigor científico-metodológico,
lo cual supone un gran esfuerzo en aras de mantener la calidad, garantizar la
validez científica y proteger a los potenciales lectores del producto
final al que tienen acceso.
Objetivo: Caracterizar
la Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas a partir de indicadores métricos.
Material y Métodos:
Se realizó un estudio cienciométrico de esta publicación
en el período comprendido desde 2002 hasta 2016. Se evaluaron las variables
bibliométricas que brinda Publish or Perish y los indicadores métricos
que facilitan SciELO y el SciELO Citation Index.
Resultados: La revista
tiene un índice H de 18 con algo más de un millar de autores publicados.
El promedio de autores por artículos es de 3 y existe un balance favorable
entre la distribución de artículos citables y no citables. Aporta
más citas que las que recibe y no posee un alto número de autocitas.
Conclusiones: La
Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas ha mostrado resultados que la colocan
entre las revistas de mejor posicionamiento relacionadas con el tema salud en
las bases de datos de mayor cobertura, lo que queda demostrado a partir del
análisis de sus indicadores métricos.
Palabras clave: Producción científica, visibilidad, cienciometría, bibliometría, revista, indicadores métricos, citas.
INTRODUCTION
The
Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas (RHCM) made its first issue
visible in January 2002, and over the course of these 15 years, it has been
placed as one of the most prestigious publications among the set of Cuban medical
full-text journals that are available in the Virtual Health Library (BVS)
of the National Medical Sciences Information Center in Cuba (INFOMED).
From the very beginning,
this electronic journal, which is sponsored by the University of Medical Sciences
of Havana (UCMH) included, among its strategic projections, the increase of
its visibility. In this sense, and after a hard work carried out by all
members of the Editorial Board, it was included in the SciELO collection,1
a prestigious database of the Ibero-American area, where its volumes appear
from 2007 to the present. Later on, other databases accepted it because it complies
with different parameters required to be inserted. Among these databases
we can mention: Latindex, EBSCO, Redalyc, Medigraphic, Cite Factor, and
Google Scholar. In the year 2003, it was one of the first Cuban journals of
the Biomedical Area that adopted its editorial process through the Open Journal
System (OJS), which provides a more efficient and unified management of the
entire process.
Recently, as a result of
a work published2 that referred to the positioning of scientific
journals with health-related issues, according to the h5-index (Hirsch
index of the articles published in the last five years), obtained from Google
Scholar Metrics in relation to the Cuban medical journals, it was stated that:
"… less than 30% of journals have h5-index values above 10, most
of them from the Medical Sciences Publishing House (ECIMED), which is evidenced
by the fact that only 2 of the 10 first publications (Revista Habanera de
Ciencias Médicas, and Medisur) are published outside that institution".
Later on, it is also stated that: "Of the journals published in some institutions
of Havana, excluding ECIMED, only the Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas
appears in the top 20". This really demonstrates in practice, the place
that the journal occupies in the national scientific scene.
However; the association
of editors, director, and editorial board is necessary in order to guarantee
an adequate editorial process, whose main purpose is to publish manuscripts
with an adequate scientific methodological accuracy; which implies a great effort
in order to maintain quality, guarantee scientific validity, and protect potential
readers who have access to the final product. In this regard, the RHCM established
a peer review system and a double blind one, which, in spite of the proven weaknesses,
continue being an indispensable element to guarantee the quality of a scientific
journal.3
OBJECTIVE
To characterize the Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas from metric indicators.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
A
scienciometric study of the Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas
was carried out during the period 2002 - 2016.
The following bibliometric
variables obtained by Publish or Perish4, a program that searches
and analyzes academic quotations based on Google Scholar, were evaluated.5
Publish or Perish program takes into account all the articles, not only the
ones that are liable for the traditional h-index.
Bibliometric variables:
- Total number of articles.
- Total number of citations.
- Average number of citations per article.
- Average number of citations per author.
- Average number of citations per author yearly.
- Average number of articles per author.
- Average number of authors per articles.
- Hirsch index.
- Zhang index or e-index.
- Egghe index or g-index.
- Contemporary h-index.
- Three variants of individual h-index (hI-index, hI,norm, and hm-index ).
- Average annual increase in the individual h-index (hI, annual).
- Proportion of citations according to the emission time.
The indexes used for this evaluation are mainly based on both productivity and visibility. The former is given by the number of articles, and the latter is attributable
to the analysis of citations. From the wide family of indexes that assume Hirsch h-index as a basis, the following ones were considered:
Hirsch h-index is the oldest in this family. It simply consists in ordering an author´s works in a decreasing manner by virtue of the citations received for each work.
We have our h-index when the rank (position in the list) exceeds or equals the value of the citation. This means that the author has "h" works with at least "h"
citations; that is, an author has an "h" index if he/she has "h" articles which have been cited at least "h" times.6-13
e-Index. It is the square root of the sum of citations of the words included in the h-index.14
g-Index. It is the one in which the square root of the sum of citations is the largest number in a decreasing order of citations.15,16,17.
Contemporary
index. Contemporary h-index takes into account the time when the article
was published and its citations. For example, a citation of an article
published in the current
year has a value of 4, whereas a citation of an article published 4 years ago
has a value of 1, and an article published 6 years ago has a weight of 4/6,
and so on. In other words, a weighed citation is later arranged as h-index.18,19
h-index for individual research group. There are three variants:20
Variant 1 – hi. h-Index is divided by the number of average
authors published by the author.
Variant 2. hi, normalized.
Each citation per article leading to h-index are selected and divided by
the number of authors of the work, and the resulting h-index is calculated.
Variant 3. hi, m, or Schreiber.
The article is divided among the authors, the number of full citations is taken
into account, and the resulting h-index is calculated.20
Annual h-index.
This is an index which considers the annual impact. It is measured as
an average annual indicator of the impact of the researcher, and it is not cumulative
the whole life as it is on h-index.21
AR-Index or JIN
Index. It is the square root of the sum of all age-weighted citations
of all documents that lead to h-index.22
AWCR index. It is
the age-weighted citation rate of the article. It measures all citations
adjusted by the age of each document which includes the traditional h-index.
It is an average of the citations in which each document is divided by the number
of years of the article, and is measured as the square root of all citations.22
AW index. It is the
square root of AWCR index to allow a comparison with h-index. It comes closer
to h-index if the citation rate (average) remains more or less constant
over the years.22
On the other hand,
the metric information that SciELO7 provides to all journals that
are included in its catalog was analyzed through its tables and figures.
The Journal was selected
to integrate the selected group of Cuban publications included in the catalog
of SciELO Citation Index8, which can be accessed in the Web of Science
database where the main scientific stream is located.
The position that the journal
occupies within its profile was searched in Google Scholar Metrics.8
RESULTS
Table
1 shows the values of the main indexes and variables given by Publish or
Perish.
The most cited articles
that have been published in RHCM can be observed in Table
2, according to the visibility score on Google Scholar.
The analysis of the 100
issues of a journal according to the number of times they are downloaded from
this database is found in the metric evaluations that SciELO database has started
to develop. This result is shown in Table 3.
Table
4 presents the most cited works according to the metrics of SciELO Citation
Index, and Table 5 shows a comparison between Scielo
Citation Index and Publish or Perish regarding the citations reported for RHCM
in each database.
In its statistical metrics,
SciELO offers a graphic assessment of the indicators that were taken into account
to evaluate the scientific production of the Revista Habanera de Ciencias
Médicas.
Figure 1 shows the relation of the cited and non-cited articles. This relation of equilibrium has a favorable behavior towards the works that can be citable.
Figure 2 shows the proportion of citations received and made as well as the self-citations. Notice that the self-citations represent the lowest rate and indicate whether there are authors of the RHCM that cite articles published in the same journal. It also indicates that the RHCM makes more citations than the ones it receives from a different publication.
The useful life of the articles and volumes for the current year is available in graphic form in the following URL: http://analytics.scielo.org/w/accesses?journal=1729-519X&collection=cub
In general, the original articles have the most numerous accesses, as it is observed in Figure 3.
Figure 4 shows that the most published types of articles in the journal are the ones that present results of original research, followed by the editorials.
The
Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicaspublished most articles in
the year 2009. It can be a fact that favored that the articles published
that year were the most cited ones. This fact is observed in a smaller proportion
in 2014 because it was a year in which the average of published articles was
surpassed. This information can be taken from URL: http://analytics.scielo.org/w/publication/article?journal=1729-519X&collection=cub\
The Revista Habanera
de Ciencias Médicas has also published articles of different authors
from other countries, mainly from Latin America, such as: Brasil, Argentina,
México, and Venezuela. This geographic area shows the countries with
most number of collaborations with the journal. These data can be taken
from URL: http://analytics.scielo.org/w/publication/article?journal=1729-519X&collection=cub
The distribution of
authors per articles shows a greater frequency of articles written by three
authors, followed by articles written by only one author; and then, the ones
that are written in pairs. This information is available from URL: http://analytics.scielo.org/w/publication/article?journal=1729-519X&collection=cub.
DISCUSSION
The
evaluation of a scientific journal is carried out through indicators of excellence,
which include methodological and scientific aspects that can be measured.
Table 1 expresses that a little more than a thousand authors
from different origins have published in RHCM, but these authors are mainly
from Cuba, and particularly from the University of Medical Sciences of Havana.
A simple analysis reveals us that many professors and students from this university
have never published in this journal, when taking into account the teaching
staff and the increasing number of students; however, if the indicator of the
scientific publications is considered in all the annual evaluation process of
the professors, then it can be inferred that they do not make an efficient use
of the journal.
Another interpretation that can be made with regard to the results shown in
Table 1 is that the h-index of the journal is poor, although a sustained
increase can be observed during the last years; and, certainly, as this indicator
combines the elements of productivity with visibility, then it indicates that
we should achieve that our authors and articles receive more citations.
When we observe the most cited articles by Google Scholar in Table
2, we realize that many professors from our teaching staff excel in a prominent
way. Similarly, it is highlighted that the main topics that discuss the most
cited articles deal with Odontology; quality of teaching; and cancer; and they
correspond to the time period from 2003-2011. This is an important aspect
because it permits to set future strategies to give priority to the articles
that deal with these topics of research.
Table 3 shows a significant fact; it demonstrates that both
the articles and the volumes which are even more accessed at present, are the
ones which were published during the three-year period 2008-2010, which
would require a study of contents that come out from the objectives of this
work, although we should consider that it was in those years when the RHCM published
the most quantity of articles.In 2008, there was an interesting event for Cuban
medical journals, and it was the entry of 18 Cuban journals to Scopus, the database
represented by the multinational Elsevier. The fact that these volumes are the
most cited ones may some way be linked to the "discovery" of the Cuban medical
journals by the international scientific community that only accesses to the
Internet.16
A very important help has been the inclusion of the journal in the SciELO
Citation Index, which reaches a high visibility because it is consulted by readers
that search for the main scientific critics (main stream) that supports the
Web of Science. It can be observed in Table 4
that the number of citations that the articles published in RHCM has in this
prestigious database is lower than the ones that can be reported by using Publish
or Perish to analyze Google Scholar data; however, these citations can have
a greater qualitative weight because they are made in journals of main scientific
current, which is considered a wonderful opportunity for the journal to be visible
in those publications of the so-called first quartile, according to the
classification of publications of the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education (MES).
The most topics discussed in the articles that have been more cited by Science
Citation Index are related to medical education, Scienciometry, and the diseases
of highest prevalence.
The comparative analysis of the citations reported by Google Scholar and SciELO
Citation index (Table 5) allows the assessment and
the difference between readers from one or another database. Some articles
among the most cited ones in one or another database are repeated, which could
be a content analysis aim, and also the aim of topics of greatest impact for
one or another user.
In accordance with a scientific
journal, there is a predominance of citable articles (Figure 1),
although there is an increase of the non-citable ones in the latest years;
therefore, the editorial board of the journal should consider this tendency
as an alert, although the proportion is not alarming yet. It is important
to highlight that the non-citable published articles reduce the visibility
from a science metric point of view, and they mainly present topics that are
not essentially related to sciences; nevertheless, the Journal also has other
informative and educative functions to cover, which take into account the essential
functions of the university.
The total of citations
that RHCM receives is still insufficient, but its pace is increasing.
This can be observed in Figure 2 that shows the number of
citations received during the last period according to SciELO database, and
in the comparison between the citations received and made. We consider that
our authors do not cite the articles of the own journal, which could indicate
that they do not make an exhaustive bibliographic search in the database in
which the journal is indexed, and that the national articles are not considered
frequently.10,11
This same phenomenon
is observed in other Cuban journals indexed in SciELO, and the national scientific
production in general.2 In this sense, the authors who send their
manuscripts to a determined journal, are not necessarily subjected to cite articles
about those topics published in it; however, it would be pertinent for the editors
to have the possibility to see the most current and relevant works that are
cited in the journal in which they are working.
The consultations of articles about results of original researches are followed
by the comments or criticisms to articles (Figures 3 and 4).
The interest of readers on the articles that analyze a health situation or present
a critical study on a topic calls the attention. This is an important
quality indicator, because in a way the journal can be able to publish the most
quantity of original articles, it could bring more readers´ interest on
its topics, although the mere fact of having an appropriate number of original
contributions does not make it a journal with higher or lesser bibliometric
impact. For this, we must take into account mainly the validity, relevance,
and the applicability of the published articles, since the most important purpose
of scientific communication within the medical field is the improvement of health
care by means of the clinical /and or/ teaching practice of the results of these
studies.
Although it a topic which has been under discussion for both its weakness and its metric indicator; we can ascertain that the times a volume of the journal or the abstracts about some articles have been consulted and downloaded in both pdf format or html, can be used as a metric variable that contributes to the analysis of the journal.15 The volumes in any of the formats previously mentioned were analyzed and downloaded in the period 2009-2010.
As a general rule, there is an adequate behavior of the average number of authors per work, which is praised. The number of cited authors could increase to the extent that the journal manages to be inserted in other databases and social networks.12,13
It has been proven that all the metric indicators rise when the journal or the author uploads the articles to the social networks.14,15 A future determination of the editorial board of the RHCM is to be inserted in the social networks and, above all, in the science networks which are more rigorously academic, and the ones which are visited by an increasing number of researchers all over the world. Researchers and/or authors of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana are being conscious of the need to create their profiles in these social networks to strengthen their visibility and, therefore, their citation indexes.23
We should point out that all the works that are cited by Publish or Perish, being Google Scholar their database, receive all the citations that also appear in SciELO Citation index. Also, many articles that are widely cited according to Publish or Perish, have no citation in SciELO Citation index. The latter is the database consulted by researchers who have the Web of Science as a pattern in the so-called main stream. This does not mean that RHCM is in that stream, but the journal is in the nearest limit which can "drag" us to this wide access database. The inclusion in this database was analyzed by SciELO, and the journal will be there until it demonstrates that it is capable of being citable by the main scientific stream, and that it is a permanent meter for measuring quality.
We declare as a limitation of the study that it does not consider the metric analysis made by other databases where the RHCM is included; and also, that it does not study deeply all the family derived from the indexes that the study could complete.
CONCLUSIONS
The Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas has demonstrated to be a journal, which is associated with a university institution. It is also an ascending platform that makes the scientific production of its teaching staff known; placing its results among the most positioned journals related to health topics in databases of the greatest coverage, which is demonstrated during the analysis of its metric indicators.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We recommend to incorporate the bibliometric studies of the journal into the analysis of the Editorial Board in order to enrich the editorial policies and improve the visibility in the main databases where it is included.
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Received:
October 13, 2016.
Approved: January 7, 2017.
Ray Valdés Balbín. Universidad de Ciencias Médicas
de La Habana. La Habana, Cuba.
E-mail: rvaldes@infomed.sld.cu
La revista está: Certificada por el CITMA
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