CS因子取代sci影響因子，路透社237億拋售SCI

愛思唯爾CS因子或取代JCR影響因子，路透社237億拋售SCI乃神人

作者鄧思超，北京航空航天大學博士生，《百納知識》公眾號副主編，公益團體核心骨幹，科技新聞、流體力學案例分享等板塊負責人。研究方向包括：流動控制及減阻技術研究，飛行器設計及氣動性能計算。

導語

2016年12月，學術出版巨頭愛思唯爾終於拿出自己的期刊影響因子評分系統CiteScore資料庫。

2016年7月，湯森路透社提前把SCI和JCR賣了237.3億，難道他們真是天人，聽到風聲，感覺出了競爭對手，所以把SCI和JCR高點拋售了……。

CiteScore資料庫能夠使SCI影響因子徹底和科研工作評價體系say「拜拜」嗎？

湯森路透影響因子JIF評價體系本身應該是客觀的，但是單純的依靠影響因子評估論文的質量，甚至評估科研工作者的水平，確是有失公允的。因此，近年來，對於SCI影響因子的爭議一直不斷。雖然Nature、Science、Springer是影響因子的最大受益者，卻也聯合在預印本網站BioRxiv上發表文章抵制影響因子，並建議採用引用分佈曲線（Citation Distribution）來取代影響因子的簡單算術平均。至今為止，不少權威機構紛紛提出多元化的文獻計量評價指標，包括Nature的引用分佈曲線、谷歌的H5指數以及中國知網的CI指數等，但多年來SCI影響因子在學術研究體系中的評價地位一直沒有受到實質性挑戰和撼動。

☆CiteScore橫空出世，數據更多更全，還免費

相比於影響因子，CiteScore的計算資料庫更大，計算公式也做了調整，並且具有不同的科學領域的期刊排名，同時免費開放。

One of science』s most contentious metrics has a flashy new rival. On 8 December, publishing giant Elsevier launched the CiteScore index to assess the quality of academic journals.

湯森路透的影響因子作為科學界最有爭議的指標之一，近期終於迎來了一個強勁的競爭對手。12月8日，出版業巨頭愛斯維爾推出了自己的期刊影響力評分系統CiteScore，有望挑戰影響因子的權威地位。

Although the index ranks journals with a formula that largely mimics the influential Journal Impact Factor (JIF), it covers twice as many journals — 22,000 to the JIF』s 11,000 — and its formula includes tweaks that produce some notably different results, including lower scores for some high-JIF journals.

雖然愛斯維爾CiteScore的計算公式與期刊影響因子（JIF）大致相同，但是它涵蓋的期刊數量達到22000本，比JIF大一倍。並且計算公式也做了一些調整，使得一些原本高影響因子的期刊引用評分降低。

If CiteScore becomes popular, these quirks could change the behaviour of journals hoping to maximize their score, say analysts. But CiteScore comes at a challenging time for such metrics. It』s not obvious that there is an appetite for a similar competitor to the JIF, and scientists note that no matter what differences CiteScore provides, it will have to survive the same criticisms that are lobbed at its rival — most notably that the JIF is so commonly promoted by publishers as a yardstick for 『quality』 that researchers are judged by the impact factor of the journal in which their work appears, rather than by what they actually write.

分析人士認為，如果CiteScore被廣泛採用，會改變期刊片面追求評分最大化的行為。但是CiteScore這種指標評價形式也面臨著挑戰。人們對這樣一個類似於期刊影響因子的指標並沒有明顯的偏好。科學家指出，不論CiteScore有什麼改進，它都面臨著和影響因子一樣的質疑——單純用數字指標來衡量科研人員的工作，而不是他們具體的研究內容。

「In my view, journal metrics should always be accompanied by health warnings that are at least as prominent as the ones you see on cigarette packets,」 says Stephen Curry, a structural biologist at Imperial College London. 「Such metrics are at the root of many of the current evils in research assessment.」

倫敦帝國學院的結構生物學家斯蒂芬·庫里說：「在我看來，使用期刊指標時應該伴隨著警告，就像香煙包上的健康警告一樣明顯。這些指標是當前許多研究評估問題的根源。」

☆作者和編輯都需要CiteScore出世

Amsterdam-based Elsevier has for many years provided a suite of analytical indicators, including journal metrics that have never become as popular as the JIF. It says that it has launched CiteScore owing to 「overwhelming demand」 from authors and editors.

總部位於阿姆斯特丹的Elsevier多年來一直提供一套分析指標，包括從未像JIF一樣受歡迎的雜誌指標。而重磅推出CiteScore的原因是來自作者和編輯的「壓倒性的需求」。

The publisher is uniquely placed to challenge the JIF』s hegemony. It owns the Scopus database, a record of article abstracts and their reference lists. Aside from Web of Science, on which the JIF is based, it is the world』s only reasonably comprehensive and carefully curated citation database. But Scopus is bigger, enabling scientists, librarians and funders to check the popularity of many more journals. Furthermore, unlike the JIF, which is available only to subscribers, CiteScore figures will be free online for anyone to view and analyse, although full details of the documents included in the calculations are visible only to subscribers.

愛斯維爾出版商在挑戰JIF霸權方面具有獨特的地位。它擁有Scopus資料庫，文章摘要及其參考文獻列表的記錄。 除了JIF所基於的Web of Science，它是世界上唯一相當全面和精心策劃的引文資料庫。Scopus更強大的數據資源使的科學家、圖書館員和基金組織能夠查看更多期刊的流行度。 此外，與僅供訂閱者使用的JIF不同，CiteScore的數據將免費為所有人提供查看和分析服務，但計算中包含的文檔的完整詳細信息僅對訂閱者可見。

When it comes to their underlying formulae, CiteScore and JIF are near-doppelgängers. To score any journal in any given year, both tot up the citations received to documents that were published in previous years, and divide that by the total number of documents. The most popular version of the JIF looks at research articles published in the previous two years, whereas CiteScore stretches back to the previous three.

CiteScore和JIF的計算公式相似，都是將某期刊前幾年出版的文章被引用次數加總，之後除以文章總數。不同的是影響因子是期刊前2年發表的論文在第3年的篇均引用次數，而CiteScore則是前3年發表的論文在第4年的篇均引用次數。

☆柳葉刀排名從第4低到200以外

But one significant difference leads some high-JIF journals, such as Nature, Science and The Lancet, to do worse in CiteScore. The new metric counts all documents as potentially citable, including editorials, letters to the editor, corrections and news items. These are less cited by scholars, so they drag down the average. The Lancet, for instance, drops from a healthy average of 44 in JIF — putting it in 4th position overall — to a mere 7.7 in CiteScore, where it is outside the top 200.

但是一些高引期刊，如《Nature》，《Science》和《The Lancet》，其CiteScore評分卻大幅下降。 這是因為CiteScore指標不區分文章類型，將所有文章都視為可引用的內容，包括社論，編輯信件，更正和新聞項目。而以上這些類型的文章很少被學者引用，所以所除的分母很大，拉低了平均引用次數。 例如，《The Lancet》的影響因子為44，在湯森路透排名第四，而CiteScore只有7.7，排在200名之外。

對出版商造成重大衝擊

Such a distinction could have major consequences for the behaviour of publishers. 「As there is intense competition among top-tier journals, adoption of CiteScore will push editors to stop publishing non-research documents, or shunting them into a marginal publication or their society website,」 predicts Phil Davis, a publishing consultant in Ithaca, New York.

這樣的區分可能對出版商產生重要的影響。美國Ithaca出版顧問Phil Davis預言：「由於頂級期刊之間的激烈競爭，採用CiteScroe將會促使編輯停止出版非研究性的文章，或者將其分流到邊緣出版物或其社會網站」。

Nature評分也大幅度降低，但Nature選擇不對CiteScore表態

The Lancet, Nature and other journals declined to comment on CiteScore. But Jeremy Berg, the editor-in-chief of Science, says that the journal is 「very proud of our content that lies outside traditional research reports and articles」 and that 「any metric that is based on citation data alone will undervalue the impact of such non-research content」.

Lancet、Nature以及其他雜誌均拒絕對CiteScore資料庫發表評論。但是Science主編Jeremy Bery說，Science雜誌對自己設置的非學術報告和論文欄目非常自豪，並且「任何基於引文數據的度量指標都將低估了這樣的非研究性內容」。

「The portfolio performance of all publishers may look a bit different using CiteScore metrics, including Elsevier, but all publishers gain in that they can explore the performance of more of their titles because of the broader coverage of Scopus,」 says Lisa Colledge, director of research metrics at Elsevier. She says that CiteScore should be used only to compare related journals, not to compare raw scores across different fields. For example, the index ranks The Lancet 25th out of 1,549 『general medicine』 journals — putting it in the top 98th percentile of journals in that subject category.

「使用CiteScore度量指標，包括Elsevier在內的所有出版商的業務量可能看起來都有點不同，但是所有的出版商都可以通過Scopus廣泛的覆蓋面來探索更多的標題表現形式」，Elsevier評價指標研究主任Lisa Colledge如上所說。她說，CiteScore應該只用於比較相關的期刊，而不是比較不同的領域原始分數。例如，例如Lancet 在「普通醫學」領域的1,549本雜誌中排25名，超過98%的同類期刊。

CiteScore使用對Elsevier自己的雜誌業務有25%提升

After the index was released, scientists at the Eigenfactor project, a research group at the University of Washington in Seattle, published a preliminary calculation finding that Elsevier』s portfolio of journals gains a 25% boost relative to others if CiteScore is used instead of the JIF.

在指標發布后，位於西雅圖華盛頓大學的一個研究小組Eigenfactor項目的科學家們，發表了一個初步的計算結果，即如果使用CiteScore而不是JIF，Elsevier的期刊業務量相對於其他期刊將獲得25%的提升。

That is because any publisher with journals that produce lesser-cited 『non-research』 documents will see its portfolios drop under CiteScore, says Colledge, whereas those whose journals mainly publish only research articles — such as Wiley, the American Chemical Society and Elsevier — will see a relative gain. 「Scopus has included all document types in CiteScore metrics because this is the most simple and transparent approach that also acknowledges every item』s potential to cite and be cited,」 she says.

這是因為任何出版商包括雜誌社出版引用較少的「非研究性」文章將看到其影響因子在CiteScore下評估均下降，Colledge說，而那些期刊主要發表的只有研究性文章，如Wiley, the American Chemical Society and Elsevier-將看到相對增益。「Scopus將所有文檔類型都包含在CiteScore指標中，因為這是最簡單、最透明的方法，也承認每一個項目均有可能引用和被引用」。

Clarivate Analytics in Philadelphia, which bought the JIF and the Web of Science earlier this year from Thomson Reuters, says that it doesn』t see any new insights in CiteScore. Other, more complex metrics —– including several published by Elsevier and Thomson Reuters — have been developed to rank journals in the past, but none has yet proved as popular as the JIF. 「If anything, another, different metric will reinforce the status that the JIF has as the definitive assessment of journal impact,」 says Clarivate spokesperson Heidi Siegel.

費城的Clarivate Analytics，今年早些時候從Thomson Reuters購買了JIF和Web of Science，他說在CiteScore中沒有看到任何新的見解。其他更複雜的指標，包括由Elsevier和Thomson Reuters頒布的幾個指標，已經被開發用來對過去的期刊進行排名，但沒有一個被證明像JIF一樣受歡迎。「如果有什麼，另一個不同的度量指標將加強JIF作為對期刊影響的確定性評估的地位」，Clarivater發言人Heidi Sigel說。

Some even wonder whether Elsevier, which publishes more than 2,500 journals, should be producing CiteScore at all. The JIF has always been owned by non-publishers. 「I question the appropriateness of a publisher getting involved with the metrics that evaluate the very content that it publishes,」 says Joseph Esposito, a publishing consultant in New York City. But Elsevier says that it is "a provider of information solutions as well as a publisher", and treats all the publishers it analyses equally.

有些人甚至懷疑是否發布過超過2500個期刊的Elsevier應該產生CiteScore。其實，JIF一直掌握在非出版商手裡。紐約市出版顧問約瑟夫·埃斯波索托（Joseph Esposito）說：「我懷疑發行商參與評估發布內容的指標是否恰當。但是Elsevier說，它是「信息解決方案的提供商以及出版商」，並對所有出版商進行平等分析。

總結：

作者認為，Citescore廣受關注和追捧，一方面是來源於出版巨頭愛斯維爾的權威地位和其強大的資料庫，另一方面是人們對影響因子「一家獨大」的現象頗有微詞。

相比於影響因子， Citescore的優勢如下：

1 資料庫更強大，文獻計量範圍更加全面；

2 沒有把不同學科的影響指標混為一談，並對不同領域的相對排名做出區分，也是很有參考價值的。

3 中國期刊得到解放，中文版與英文版期刊，都是CiteScore數據裡面，如果有一天，國內認可CiteScore資料庫裡面的檢索期刊，認可CiteScore影響因子，那麼中文期刊就會得到真正的解放，中國學術界又可能重新認可這些期刊了。

SCI資料庫中，被檢索的中文期刊只有幾十種，而在SCOPUS中，一下就上升到好幾百種了（2013年有600多種），本人所在領域的絕大部分中文核心期刊都是被這個資料庫收錄的。

Citescore的提出，對引導科學評價由單一化依靠影響因子，變為多元化的評價指標并行，具有重要意義。但是，Citescore仍然只是一個數字化的指標，只能定量化評價期刊的影響力，並不能全面反映科研人員的研究水平。如何建立更加科學、公正、嚴謹的學術評價體系，仍是值得研究和思考的問題。

小編：子心