Evaluating the influence of scholarly journals
The official version of the full Eigenfactor web site is now available online at http://www.eigenfactor.org/. Eigenfactor.org is a non-commercial academic research project sponsored by the Bergstrom lab in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington which aims to develop novel methods for evaluating the influence of scholarly periodicals and for mapping the structure of academic research. The Eigenfactor web site now covers all 7000+ journals in the 2004 Science and Social Science JCR, and also covers 110,000+ reference items cited by these journals but not listed in the JCR.
The web site also provides information on the value-per-dollar that journals provide. Users can click on any journal title, and see a popup with more information, including full information about price, publisher, and value provided, courtesy of Ted Bergstrom and Preston McAfee’s http://www.journalprices.com/.
1. Eigenfactor ranks journals much as Google ranks websites. Scholarly references join journals together in a vast network of citations. Eigenfactor uses the structure of the entire network (instead of purely local citation information) to evaluate the importance of each journal.
2. Eigenfactor contains 115,000 reference items. Eigenfactor not only ranks scholarly journals in the natural and social sciences, but also lists newsprint, PhD theses, popular magazines and more. In so doing, it more fairly values those journals bridging the gap between the social and natural sciences.
3. Eigenfactor corrects for differences in citation patterns across disciplines. Different disciplines have different standards for citation and different time scales on which citations occur. The average article in a leading cell biology journal might receive 10-30 citations within two years; the average article in leading mathematics journal would do very well to receive 2 citations over the same period. By using the whole citation network, Eigenfactor automatically accounts for these differences and allows better comparison across research areas.
4. Eigenfactor uses 5-year citation data. In many research areas, articles are not frequently cited until several years after publication. Therefore, measures that only look at citations in the first two years after publication can be be misleading. Eigenfactor is calculated based on the citations received over a five year period.
5. Eigenfactor provides information about journal prices. In collaboration with journalprices.com, Eigenfactor provides information about price and value for thousands of scholarly periodicals.
6. Eigenfactor is completely free and completely searchable.
