Tag Archives: google scholar

Study Reveals Declining Influence of High Impact Factor Journals

The most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in the world, such as Cell, Nature, Science, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), have less and less influence amongst scientists, according to a paper co-authored by Vincent Larivière, a professor at the University of Montreal’s School of Library and Information Sciences. He questions the relationship between journal “impact factor” and number of citations subsequently received by papers.

“In 1990, 45% of the top 5% most cited articles were published in the top 5% highest impact factor journals. In 2009, this rate was only 36%,” Larivière said. “This means that the most cited articles are published less exclusively in high impact factor journals.” The proportion of these articles published in major scholarly journals has sharply declined over the last twenty years. His study was based on a sample of more than 820 million citations and 25 million articles published between 1902 and 2009. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. (more…)

Read More

The Role of the Internet in Higher Education

There are many pros and cons to the issue of the Internet’s influences on education, and experts have called it everything from the hemlock of higher education to an innovative boon. While it’s probably neither of these extremes, there are some high and low points of the Internet’s role in higher education that can be observed on their own. By enabling students to take advantage of the positive elements of the Internet for educational purposes and restricting the detrimental sides of the Web, academic success can become a more widespread reality.  (more…)

Read More