Evaluating E-Contents Beyond Impact Factor - A Pilot Study Selected Open Access Journals In Library And Information Science  

Scholarly communication through Open Access (OA) journals has become a global phenomenon. This article reports on a study that measures the value of OA journals based on citation counts (ISI's Journal Impact Factor). It compares three highly ranked commercial electronic journals to five OA electronic journals. The non-OA journals are MIS Quarterly, Journal of American Medication Informatics Association, and Annual Review of Information Science and Technology; the five OA journals are Ariadne, D-Lib Magazine, First Monday, Information Research, and Information Technology and Disabilities. The criteria are established by ten major databases: Thompson's ISI, American Psychological Association's PsycInfo, Latin American and Canadian Health Science's LILCS, National Medical Library's MEDLINE, Scientific Electronic Library's SciELO, The IOWA Guide, CSA's LISA, EBSCO's LISTA, H.W. Wilson's Library Literature and Information Science, and R.R. Bowker's Ulrich International Periodical Directory. These basic criteria are categorized under 11 broad issues: availability, authority and review policy, scope and coverage, exhaustiveness of articles, page format, availability of hyperlinks, currency, updating policy, search facility, and other miscellaneous issues. Ten years' growth of Library and Information Science (LIS) OA journals has been measured by counting articles manually. During the last ten years the highest number of articles was published by First Monday, followed by D-Lib Magazine and Ariadne; the average number of articles per issue reported in Ariadne ranks first.

Mukherjee, Bhaskar. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2007). Articles>Publishing>Research>Assessment

Evaluating Faculty Research in the Electronic Age: Business School Deans' Perceptions of Publication Formats  

Perhaps the most obvious example of innovation in faculty performance is the adoption of new technologies for research. Both administrators and faculty have expressed concern about the role that electronic publications play in their research evaluation systems, particularly in Business Schools, where scholarly publication is often emphasized over other activities. Yet, there appears to be no empirical evidence for the way that electronic journals, conference proceedings, and abstracts are evaluated compared to printed paper versions. Therefore, this study sought to determine how Business School Deans regard the physical form in which their faculty are publishing.

Hynes, Geraldine E. and Robert Stretcher. Association for Business Communication (2005). Articles>Publishing>Online>Assessment

The Impact of Perceptions of Journal Quality on Business and Management Communication Academics    

This commentary describes and critiques criteria that, according to results from an Association for Business Communication (ABC) member survey, are having an impact on quality judgments about our journals. ABC members rank the Journal of Business Communication and Business Communication Quarterly as top research and pedagogical journals in business/management communication, a finding corroborated by a larger study of academics in business and technical communication. However, the growing importance of citation counts and journal rankings currently disadvantages our journals, presenting us with professional obligations and personal dilemmas in relation to them. The authors' purpose is to raise awareness of the various determinants of perceptions of journal quality, to explore the communal views of ABC members on this issue, and to seek ways of enhancing the value of business/management communication research in the academic marketplace.

Rogers, Priscilla S., Nittaya Campbell, Leena Louhiala-Salminen, Kathy Rent and Jim Suchan. JBC (2007). Articles>Publishing>Research>Assessment

Measure Your Publication Program's Dollar Value to Your Organization

Get no respect? Then do the math to prove how much money your publications save and make for your employer.

Writing that Works (2003). Articles>Publishing>Assessment

A Practitioners' Citation Index?    

Whether articles have been applied on the job or have simply expanded our mastery of the field, how can we tell which articles practitioners find useful? This is the question I've wrestled with over the past three months. Unfortunately, supplying an answer isn't as easy as asking the question.

Hayhoe, George F. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Publishing>Assessment

Publication Communication

Does your business put out a regular publication, such as a newsletter, journal or annual report? If so, the reason for it is to communicate a particular message to a particular audience, and it will be vital to your business to do this effectively. The following are some questions to ask yourself when assessing your publications.

Right Words. Articles>Publishing>Assessment

Publishing Futures Within (or Without) the Humanities

Humanities disciplines have attributed enormous importance to scholarly publishing, but have not yet sufficiently examined the changes of circumstance which have re-formed the nature and interests of the publishing industry in recent decades.

Sauer, Geoffrey. Society for Critical Exchange (1999). Articles>Publishing>Assessment>History

Time Well Spent: The Magazine Publishing Industry's Online Niche    

This article compares the uses of the print and online versions of the same magazine by its readership. Combining surveys of the readership and commercial data from the publisher and web designer, the study examines how one magazine has developed an online publication for its readers. Group Leisure is a niche magazine which has been in print for over a decade and online for two years. This article analyses the usage of the magazine in terms of age, gender and modal occupation of its readers and examines how their understanding of spending and saving time on the magazine underpins their perceptions of its value. The results and conclusions of this research have relevance to the publishing industry and to the study of online journalism.

Ingham, Deena and Alexis Weedon. Convergence (2008). Articles>Publishing>Online>Assessment

Symbolic Capital and Academic Fields: An Alternative Discourse on Journal Rankings    

During my 30 years in the academy, I have seen universities subject to increased demands for accountability. These demands from both internal and external publics translate into added attention to quality assessment. To evaluate teaching, universities measure student learning outcomes and rely on standardized scores as indicators of teaching effectiveness. To assess research productivity, departments document publications that appear in top-ranked journals and presses and track dollar amounts raised through external funding. This focus on evaluation, in turn, lends new credence to independent ranking systems that provide unbiased indices of quality. An unintended consequence of these academic norms, however, is the pattern of treating standards as objective indices rather than practical guidelines.

Putnam, Linda L. Management Communication Quarterly (2009). Articles>Research>Publishing>Assessment

Journal Rankings and Academic Research: Two Discourses About the Quality of Faculty Work    

Peer evaluation is the hallmark of the academic profession. Hiring, advancement, and reputation in the university setting have traditionally depended on a scholar's work as judged by his or her colleagues. The emerging trend toward journal ranking as an indicator of research accomplishment poses an important challenge to professional academic standards and to higher education generally because ranking schemes diminish the professoriate and degrade knowledge work. We argue that when scholarly journals are ranked in terms of their desirability as publication outlets they take on the characteristics of commodities.

Hogler, Raymond and Michael A. Gross. Management Communication Quarterly (2009). Articles>Publishing>Research>Assessment