Major indexing service reverses decision to suppress two journals from closely followed metric

Following pushback from members of the taxonomy community, Clarivate Analytics, the company behind the Impact Factor, has reversed its decision to suppress two journals from receiving those scores this year.

As we reported in late June, Clarivate suppressed 33 journals from its Journal Citation Reports, which meant denying them an Impact Factor, for high levels of self-citation that boosted their scores and ranking. Many universities — controversially — rely on Impact Factor to judge the work of their researchers, so the move could have a dramatic effect on journals and the authors whose work appears in them.

As we reported earlier this month, at least three journals have appealed the move: Zootaxa, the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, and Body Image. Today, Clarivate announced it was reversing its decision on the two taxonomy journals, Zootaxa and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

In a statement, Clarivate said:

Our approach to suppressions is data-driven and we do not assume motive. The data contained within the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) reflects each journal’s citation network and this may be distorted by journal self-citation, which is why we suppress for unusually high levels of such activity. Suppression does not mean removal from JCR or Web of Science, it simply means that this year’s data is suppressed from JCR. 

In exceptional circumstances there may be compelling editorial reasons for an atypical level of journal self-citation. Data and context provided by Zootaxa and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology supported additional citation analysis. Both of these journals will be included in the September reload of the Journal Citation Reports, with JIFs supplied in the JCR Help section until then. We continue to listen and learn, working with the research community on our evolving suppression policy.

In a guest post for Retraction Watch, Nandita Quaderi, the editor in chief of Clarivate’s Web of Science, explains how the company thinks about suppressions.

A company spokesperson added some context for the decisions:

Data and contextual information provided by Zootaxa and by International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM)on appeal supported an additional layer of citation analysis.  We have determined that the high level of Zootaxa self-citations is proportionate to its publication output, comprising nearly 20% of the Zoology category. 

IJSEM identified that the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes requires that researchers identifying new bacterial species publish this work in IJSEM, so that each new report is also highly dependent on past content in the journal. This dependence is necessary for the proper context of new reports. Both journals will be included in the September reload of the Journal Citation Reports, with Journal Impact Factors supplied in the JCR Help section in the interim.  

Zootaxa’s Impact Factor is 0.949 — without self-citations, it would have been 0.544 — and IJSEM’s is 2.405, but would have been 1.422 without counting self-citations.

The company is still reviewing Body Image‘s appeal, according to the spokesperson, as it was submitted just a week ago.

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