Online ISSN: 2325-7466
2006
Triannual
National Association of Special Education Teachers (NASET)
United States

Articles

Investigating the Journal Impact Factor of Special Education Journals Indexed in the Social Sciences Science Edition from Web of Science

  • Funda Örnek (Author) Bahrain Teachers College, University of Bahrain
    Funda Örnek is working as an Associate Professor and also as a head in the department of Science, Math, &ICT Educaion at Bahrain Teachers College of University of Bahrain in Kingdom of Bahrain. She received her Ph.D. on Physics Education from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA; her Master’s Degree on Science Education from University of Colorado at Denver, Colorado, USA; and her B.S. on Engineering Physics from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. She worked in Physics Department at Purdu e University in USA and Balikesir University in Turkey before taking up the position a, Bahrain Teachers College in Bahrain. She has published several articles in international journals and books. She also referees for several international science education journals.
  • Ruben Miranda (Author) Complutense University of Madrid image/svg+xml
    Ruben Miranda is Assistant Professor in the Chemical and Materials Department of Computense University of Madrid (Spain) since 2018. He obtained the degree in Chemical Engineering (Environmental Engineering) in 2002 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2008, both in Complutense University of Madrid. His main research interest is in environmental engineering, especially wastewater treatment technologies and waste management, but he is also interested in scientometrics and bibliometrics and their potential use to evaluate the research and the researchers, as well as education innovation. He has participated in more than 15 competitive research projects (European, national and regional research projects), publishing 40 scientific papers (35 papers indexed in Journal of Citation Reports) and presenting more than 40 communications to congresses. He has also participated in numerous teaching innovation projects (8) in Complutense University of Madrid, producing numerous teaching materials (books, virtual labs, etc.) and communications to congresses.
  • Metin Orbay (Author) University of Amasya image/svg+xml
    Metin Orbay is working as a full professor in the department of Science Education at Education Faculty of Amasya University in Turkey. He received his Ph.D on Physics from Institute of Sciences, Ondokuz Mayis University, Turkey; his master’s degree on Physics from Department of Physics, Institute of Sciences, Ondokuz Mayis University. He worked as a research assistant, an assistant professor, and associate professor in Amasya University. Also, he worked as a head of the department of science education of Education Faculty and the dean of Faculty of Art and Science in Amasya University. He was elected and appointed as the president of Amasya University between 2011-2019. He has numerous publications in national-international scientific journals and published many books and book chapters.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.64546/jaasep.451
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact factors of special education journals in indexed in the "Education, Special (ES)" category of the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) (Web of Science, WoS) as well as considering some bibliometric indicators. As an alternative metric of the journal impact factor (JIF), JIF quartiles were considered, finding that high impact factor journals (Q1) publish more papers than expected (max: 54.76% -min: 38.67%), whereas low impact factor journals (Q4) publish less papers (max: 21.28% -min: 14.97%) in the period 2014-2018. In addition, it is found that the share of self-citations among journal quartiles are almost on the same level and there is no significant relationship between the impact factor and the journal self-citation (r=0.005, p>0.05). The impact factor is strongly positive correlated (r=0.854: for 5-year JIF) with the citedness of the median journal paper and with the journal h-index (r=0.718 for 5-year JIF). Furthermore, it is found a strong positive correlation between h-index and the number of published articles in journals (r=0.723). However, even the impact factor is a valuable indicator for citations of a paper, it is still far to be the perfect indicator for the expected citations of a paper in a journal due to the high degree of skewness of the citation’s distribution of papers in a journal. It has been found that citation distributions over 80% of special education journals exhibit high degree skewness (skewness>1) without significant differences by journal quartiles. During the period 2014-2018 the impact factor of the special education journals has increased linearly while the journal-self citation rates have decreased in a similar way. The results obtained for special education have been compared with other fields and compatible/incompatible situations have been discussed.
Keywords
Bibliometrics, Citation Analysis, Citation Indexes, Educational Research, Journal Articles, Periodicals
References

Aguillo, I. F. (1996). Increasing the between-year stability of the impact factor in the Science Citation Index. Scientometrics, 35(2), 279-282. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02018486

Albarrán, P., & Ruiz‐Castillo, J. (2011). References made and citations received by scientific articles. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(1), 40-49. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21448

Althouse, B. M., West, J. D., Bergstrom, C. T., & Bergstrom, T. (2009). Differences in impact factor across fields and over time. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), 27-34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20936

Archambault E., & Larivière V. (2009). History of the journal impact factor: Contingencies and consequences. Scientometrics, 79, 635-649. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-2036-x

Archambault, É., & Larivière, V. (2010). The limits of bibliometrics for the analysis of the social sciences and humanities literature. World Social Science Report, 251-254.

Bar-Ilan, J. (2010). Rankings of information and library science journals by JIF and by h-type indices, Journal of Informetrics, 4(2), 141-147. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2009.11.006

Bornmann, L., & Leydesdorff, L. (2017). Skewness of citation impact data and covariates of citation distributions: A large-scale empirical analysis based on Web of Science data. Journal of Informetrics, 11(1), 164-175. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2016.12.001

Bornmann, L., Marx, W., & Schier, H. (2009). Hirsch-type index values for organic chemistry journals: A comparison of new metrics with the journal impact factor, European Journal of Organic Chemistry, 10, 1471-1476. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ejoc.200801243

Braun, T., Glänzel, W., & Schubert, A. (2006). A Hirsch-type index for journals. Scientometrics, 69(1), 169-173. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0147-4

Cai, L., Tian, J., Liu, J., Bai, X., Lee, I., Kong, X., & Xia, F. (2019). Scholarly impact assessment: a survey of citation weighting solutions. Scientometrics, 118(2), 453-478. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2973-6

Clarivate Analytics. (2020a). Title Suppressions. Retrieved January 16, 2020 from https://help.incites.clarivate.com/incitesLiveJCR/JCRGroup/titleSuppressions.html

Clarivate Analytics. (2020b). Journal Impact Factor Quartile. Retrieved January 16, 2020 from http://help.incites.clarivate.com/inCites2Live/indicatorsGroup/aboutHandbook.html

Engels, T. C. E., Ossenblok, T. L. B., & Spruyt, E. H. J. (2012). Changing publication patterns in the Social Sciences and Humanities, 2000-2009. Scientometrics, 93(2), 373-390. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0680-2

Frandsen, T. F. (2007). Journal self-citations-Analysing the JIF mechanism. Journal of Informetrics, 1(1), 47-58. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2006.09.002

Garfield, E. (1972). Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation. Science ,178, 471-479. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.178.4060.471

Garfield, E., & Pudovkin, A. (2015). Journal impact factor strongly correlates with the citedness of the median journal paper. Collnet Journal of Scientometrics and Information Management, 9(1), 5-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09737766.2015.1027099

Garg, K. C., & Kumar, S. (2014). Uncitedness of Indian scientific output. Current Science, 107(6), 965-970.

Glänzel, W., & Moed, H. (2002). Journal impact measures in bibliometric research. Scientometrics, 53(2), 171-193. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014848323806

Haghdoost, A., Zare, M., & Bazrafshan, A. (2014). How variable are the journal impact measures? Online information review (Print), 38(6), 723-737. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-05-2014-0102

Hammarfelt, B. & Rushforth, A.D. (2017). Indicators as judgment devices: An empirical study of citizen bibliometrics in research evaluation. Research Evaluation, 26, 169-180. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvx018

Harzing, A. & van der Wal, R. (2009). A Google Scholar h-index for journals: An alternative metric to measure journal impact in economics and business, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), 41-46. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20953

Heneberg, P. (2016). From excessive journal self-cites to citation stacking: analysis of journal self-citation kinetics in search for journals, which boost their scientometric indicators. PloS one, 11(4), e0153730. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153730

Henriksen, D. (2016). The rise in co-authorship in the social sciences (1980–2013). Scientometrics, 107(2), 455-476. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1849-x

Hicks, D. (2012). One size doesn’t fit all: On the co-evolution of national evaluation systems and social science publishing. Confero: Essays on education, philosophy and politics, 1(1), 67-90. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3384/confero13v1121207b

Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences, 102(46), 16569-16572. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507655102

Hodge, D. R. & Lacasse, J. R. (2011). Ranking disciplinary journals with the Google Scholar h-index: A new tool for constructing cases for tenure, promotion, and other professional decisions, Journal of Social Work Education, 47(3), 579-596. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5175/JSWE.2011.201000024

Huang, M. H., & Cathy Lin, W. Y. (2012). The influence of journal self-citations on journal impact factor and immediacy index. Online Information Review, 36(5), 639-654. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521211275957

Koo, T. K., & Li, M. Y. (2016). A guideline of selecting and reporting intraclass correlation coefficients for reliability research. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 15(2), 155-163. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcm.2016.02.012

Larivière, V., Archambault, É., Gingras, Y., & Vignola-Gagné, É. (2006). The place of serials in referencing practices: Comparing natural sciences and engineering with social sciences and humanities. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(8), 997–1004. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20349

Larivière V., Sugimoto C.R. (2019) The Journal Impact Factor: A Brief History, Critique, and Discussion of Adverse Effects. In: Glänzel W., Moed H.F., Schmoch U., Thelwall M. (eds) Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators. Springer Handbooks. Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02511-3_1

Liu, F., Guo, W., & Zuo, C. (2018). High impact factor journals have more publications than expected. Current Science, 114(5), 955-956. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs/v114/i05/955-956

Liu, W., Hu, G., & Gu, M. (2016). The probability of publishing in the first quartile journals, Scientometrics, 106, 1273-1276. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1821-1

Liu, Z. (2020). Evaluating Special Education Journals with H-type Indices and Journal Impact Factors. Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal), 1-14.

Liu, Z., & Wan, G. (2012). Comparing Journal Impact Factor and H-type Indices in Virology Journals, Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal), 891.

McGrail, M. R., Rickard, C. M., & Jones, R. (2006). Publish or perish: A systematic review of interventions to increase academic publication rates. Higher Education Research & Development, 25(1), 19-35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360500453053

McGraw, K. O., & Wong, S. P. (1996). Forming inferences about some intraclass correlation coefficients. Psychological Methods, 1(1), 30-46. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037//1082-989X.1.1.30

McVeigh, M.E. (2002). Journal self-citation in the Journal Citation Reports – Science Edition. Retrieved January 16, 2020 from http://wokinfo.com/essays/journal-self-citation-jcr/

Miranda, R., & Garcia-Carpintero, E. (2018). Overcitation and overrepresentation of review papers in the most cited papers. Journal of Informetrics, 12(4), 1015-1030. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.08.006

Miranda, R., & Garcia-Carpintero, E. (2019). Comparison of the share of documents and citations from different quartile journals in 25 research areas. Scientometrics, 121(1), 479-501. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03210-z

National Center for Education Statistics (2019). “Children and youth with disabilities” in The Condition of Education. Retreived January 16, 2020 from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgg.asp

Nederhof, A. J. (2006). Bibliometric monitoring of research performance in the social sciences and the humanities: A review. Scientometrics, 66(1), 81-100. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0007-2

Nieuwenhuysen, P., & Rousseau, R. (1988). A quick and easy method to estimate the random effect on citation measures. Scientometrics, 13(1-2), 45-52. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02095762

Orbay, M., Karamustafaoglu, O., & Miranda, R. (2020). Analysis of the journal impact factor and related bibliometric indicators in Education and Educational Research area, Educational Review, [Manuscript No: CEDR-2020-0056-Under Review]

Orbay, M., Karamustafaoglu, O., & Oner, F. (2007). What does Hirsch index evolution explain us? A case study: Turkish Journal of Chemistry, Biblios, 27(8), 1-5.

Ossenblok, T. L., Verleysen, F. T., & Engels, T. C. (2014). Co-authorship of journal articles and book chapters in the social sciences and humanities (2000–2010). Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(5), 882-897. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23015

Pajić, D. (2015). On the stability of citation-based journal rankings. Journal of Informetrics, 9(4), 990-1006. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2015.08.005

Peters, G.J.Y. (2017). Why not to use the journal impact factor as a criterion for the selection of junior researchers: A comment on Bornmann and Williams (2017). Journal of Informetrics, 11, 888-891. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2017.08.001

Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375

Pritchard, A. (1969). Statistical bibliography or bibliometrics. Journal of Documentation, 25(4), 348-349. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026482

Reedijk, J. & Moed, H.F. (2008). Is the impact of journal impact factors decreasing? Journal of Documentation, 64(2), 183-192. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410810858001

Rousseau, R. (2005). Median and percentile impact factors: A set of new indicators. Scientometrics, 63(3), 431-441. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-005-0223-1

Rousseau, R. (2006). A case study: Evolution of JASIS’ Hirsch index. Science Focus, 1(1), 16-17.

Rowlinson, M., Harvey, C., Kelly, A., Morris, H., & Todeva, E. (2015). Accounting for research quality: Research audits and the journal rankings debate. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 26, 2-22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2013.05.012

Rumrill Jr, P. D., Cook, B. G., & Stevenson, N. A. (2020). Research in Special Education: Designs, Methods, and Applications. Charles C Thomas Publisher.

Sabatino, D. A. (1981). A 5-year analysis of four selected special education periodicals. The Journal of Special Education, 15(3), 373-388. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/002246698101500308

Schubert, A. & Schubert, G. (2019). “All Along the h-index-Related Literature: A Guided Tour.” In W. Glanzel, H. Moed, U. Schmoch, and M. Thelwall, eds., Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators. Cham: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02511-3_12

Seglen, P.O. (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. BMJ, 314, 498-502. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.314.7079.497

Sivertsen, G., & Larsen, B. (2012). Comprehensive bibliographic coverage of the social sciences and humanities in a citation index: An empirical analysis of the potential. Scientometrics, 91(2), 567-575. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0615-3

Smart, J. C. (1983). Stability of education journal characteristics: 1977-1980. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00976508

Research in Higher Education, 19(3), 285-293.

Stern, D. I. (2014). High-ranked social science journal articles can be identified from early citation information. PloS one, 9(11). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0112520

Sombatsompop, N., Markpin, T., & Premkamolnetr, N. (2004). A modified method for calculating the Impact Factors of journals in ISI Journal Citation Reports: Polymer Science Category in 1997-2001. Scientometrics, 60(2), 217-235. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SCIE.0000027794.98854.f6

Summers, E. G. (1986). The information flood in learning disabilities: A bibliometric analysis of the journal literature. Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 49-60. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/074193258600700109

Sutter, M., & Kocher, M. G. (2001). Tools for evaluating research output: Are citation-based rankings of economics journals stable? Evaluation Review, 25(5), 555-566. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0193841X0102500503

Swan, A. (2010). The Open Access citation advantage: studies and results to date. Technical Report, School of Electronics & Computer Science, University of Southampton. Retrieved January 16, 2020 from https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268516/2/Citation_advantage_paper.pdf

Swanson, E., Wanzek, J., Haring, C., Ciullo, S., & McCulley, L. (2013). Intervention fidelity in special and general education research journals. The Journal of Special Education, 47(1), 3-13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022466911419516

Tang, L., & Hu, G. (2018). Evaluation woes: metrics beat bias. Nature, 559, 331. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05751-4

Togia, A., & Tsigilis, N. (2006). Impact factor and education journals: A critical examination and analysis. International Journal of Educational Research, 45(6), 362-379. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2007.02.001

Tolmie, A., Muijs, D., & McAteer, E. (2011). Quantitative methods in educational and social research using SPSS. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).

Tregoning, J. (2018). How will you judge me if not by impact factor? Nature, 558, 345. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05467-5

Van Noorden, R. (2010). Metrics: A profusion of measures. Nature, 465(7300), 864-866. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/465864a

Van Raan, A.F.J. (2005). Fatal attraction: conceptual and methodological problems in the ranking of universities by bibliometric methods. Scientometrics, 62(1), 133-143. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-005-0008-6

Yuen, J. (2018). Comparison of impact factor, eigenfactor metrics, and SCImago journal rank indicator, and h-index for neurosurgical and spinal surgical journals, World Neurosurgery, 119, e328-e337. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2018.07.144

Zurita, G., Merigó, J. M., & Lobos-Ossandón, V. (2016). A bibliometric analysis of journals in educational research. In Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering, 1, 403-408.

There are 74 references in total.
How to Cite
Örnek, F., Miranda, R., & Orbay, M. (2021). Investigating the Journal Impact Factor of Special Education Journals Indexed in the Social Sciences Science Edition from Web of Science. Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals, 16(1), 110-132. https://doi.org/10.64546/jaasep.451

Winter 2021

Article Information

  • Article Type Articles
  • Submitted December 11, 2020
  • Published February 15, 2021
  • Issue Winter 2021
  • Section Articles
  • File Downloads 0
  • Abstract Views 7
  • Altmetrics
  • Share
Download data is not yet available.