Editorial: Language, frequency and bibliometric indexes

: This editorial examines the actions undertaken in number 5 and announces two important changes for the numbers 6 and 7, namely frequency and languages. Furthermore, the use of some bibliometric indicators, such as impact factor and refusal rate, is critically analyzed.

One year has passed since the publication of our last editorial (cf., Simo & Sallan, 2009).Similar to the structure of other editorials, the present one realizes an analysis of the previous volume (volume 5), and reveals the changes we have planned for this issue and for the following one.Following the tradition of these editorials, we would like to thank the Editorial Board and the anonymous reviewers for their work.The anonymous reviewers that served in 2009 in Intangible Capital are listed in the Appendix at the end of this editorial.
We will leave for another editorial the in-depth analysis of the journal's strategic axes (cf.Simo, 2005), but we are pleased to recommend the reading of a bibliometric analysis of our journal (cf., Montes, 2010), that offers a different perspective than the one that the editors have presented until now.Nevertheless, we would like to specify what the year 2009 has meant for the journal, and to explain the changes planned for this issue and the following one in 2011.
The statistics of the journal (cf., statistics) show a significant rise of the number of manuscripts received (N=44), as this figure represents the double of the manuscripts received in 2008.At this moment, a 51% of the manuscripts received are being accepted, and the average reviewing time is 79 days.We have published 17 articles, which represents a significant rise in the average articles per number (M=4.25), the biggest since 2005 (cf., Simo y Sallan, 2009:229).However, it is still a low publication rate, considering our expectations and the publication costs incurred (cf., Simo & Sallan, 2008:233).For this reason, beginning with this issue and year, we have changed the journal's frequency (we have already notified this fact to the authors that had manuscripts accepted).From this issue on, Intangible Capital will be published twice a year, in March and October.Although this change will necessarily affect the speed of publication, we must find a compromise between journal diffusion and publication costs.This change is not definitive; adaptation and change had been one of the features of Intangible Capital since its inception.If we observe a significant rise of manuscripts received and accepted, we may consider a more frequent periodicity in the future.
One of the conclusions derived from the study undertaken in 2009 regarding the perceptions of authors that sent manuscripts to the journal in 2008 was that authors wanted to know the journal's impact factor, so that their institutions could positively assess the journal.We are pleased to announce that in 2009 IN-RECS has published the first impact factor figures for Intangible Capital.The journal is ranked in the second quarter in the field of psychology, and in the first in education, respectively.Although the journal has not been included in the field of economics, it would have been placed in the second quarter of this rank.We have applied for the inclusion of the journal in the rank of economics in this index.
According to the study of the research group EC 3 of the Universidad de Granada, the journal's impact factor in 2007 was 0.027, and 0.136 was 2008.The selfcitation level of 2008 is 33%.On the other hand, as we have stated previously, the inclusion of the journal in the Scopus database has allowed its inclusion in the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (2007).We are expecting the publication of data from 2009 to get detailed information about the bibliometric indicators from this source.
Apart from considerering indicators such as Garfield's impact factor (1955), Hirch's (2005) H index, the rate of refusal or journal's self-citation rate, our future perspective is to keep working to include our journal in the databases considered as relevant by our scientific and professional community, the one that makes possible the publication of this journal.No doubt that one of our challenges is the inclusion of the journal in the ISI WEB, specifically in the Social Sciences Citation Index.This would raise considerably the visibility of the articles published in the journal.We keep being committed to work in this direction, along with our reviewers, Editorial Board members and authors.However, we also believe that we must achieve this aim without being obsessed with bibliometric indicators, and without misusing them.
Although a lot has been heard in blogs and specialized Internet forums about editors' non-ethical practices performed in order to increase the impact factor of their journals, this kind of practices are, unfortunately, not new.Every year we are informed about such practices (e.g., Arnold & Fowler, 2010), and we are surprised to hear that the Thomson Reuters Corporation has decided to publicly quarantine 26 journals from the Journal Citation Reports considering their high self-citation rate.We believe that bibliometric and scientiometric indicators are useful tools, but we cannot predict the quality and prestige of an academic journal with only one indicator (e.g., the impact factor).We also believe that compromising publicly these journal's reputation in this way, without a detailed analysis, is not a good decision.
We believe that indicators such as self-citation rate must be used as an starting point of a detailed analysis for each case, and that it is the scientific community and the society as a whole (we are an open access journal) who should make the definitive judgment of the quality of each journal.It is important knowing such indicators, but we consider that some marketing policies such as showing the journal's impact factor in bold face and making it more visible than the journal's contents, being proud of a high refusal rate, or telling the reviewers that the journal's refusal rate must be bigger than the 50% are wrong practices.A high refusal rate may make sense in the case of a printed journal, but we should ask ourselves about the sense of keeping this rate high in online journals, that do not have space limitations for publishing articles.As Garfield (2006) acknowledges, we cannot use the impact factor only to assess everything.We believe that "the purpose of scientific periodicals must be the diffusion of scientific knowledge and not the making of an hit parade.What matters in a scientific article is the scientific content of it, and nothing can substitute the act of reading and understanding it" (Aranda-Anzaldo, 2009:22).
Being consistent with our reasoning, from this issue on we have decided to increase the number of languages of the journal.Taking advantage of the based on impact factor, as Catalan is a more minority language in research, as compared with English or Spanish.Nevertheless, as we pretend to justify in the next editorial, in our field of research the inclusion of new languages has more advantages than disadvantages, considering the capabilities of our team of reviewers.We started publishing a journal in Spanish, later we moved to a bilingual English-Spanish journal (Sallan, 2007), and now, we see ourselves capable of offering the authors the possibility of publishing articles in Catalan, if they wish so.
doi:10.3926/ic.2010.v6n2.p128-141Editorial: Language, frequency and bibliometrics indexes 132 possibilities of the newer, more stable version of our software platform, that was updated during 2009, we have included the possibility of accepting manuscripts written in Catalan.From this moment on, then, we accept manuscripts for doubleblind revision and publish articles written in English, Spanish and Catalan.This decision might hinder the possibilities of getting a high position in journal ranks y como ya viene siendo habitual en cada volumen presentamos un análisis del volumen anterior (volumen 5) y los cambios que planteamos para este y el siguiente volumen.Igual que en otros editoriales queremos aprovechar para agradecer el trabajo realizado por el Editorial Board y por los revisores anónimos que han trabajado durante el 2009, y que explicitamos en este mismo artículo (cf., Anexos).