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CARDIOVASCULAR JOURNAL OF AFRICA • Volume 30, No 6, November/December 2019
AFRICA
315
What is in a number: the impact factor, citation analysis
and 30 years of publishing the
Cardiovascular Journal of
Africa
The
Cardiovascular Journal of Africa
(CVJA) has been publishing
for 30 years. Improving visibility and accessing milestones along
the way have been discussed previously, including citation
analysis of the journal.
1-4
In medicine and in science bibliometrics, citation analysis of
journals, specifically, plays a huge role in where researchers aim
to publish. The field has been well summarised in a recent article
by Roldan-Valadez
et al
.
5
Briefly, it is believed that the status of
journals wherein scholars publish, among others, helps to define
professional status, is seen as a measure of performance, defines
scientific merit, and is used by funders to make decisions.
Citation analyses defining impact range from the granddaddy
of all, the original journal impact factor (JIF) from the World
of Science (WOS) Journal Citation Reports (JCR), to the
Eigenfactor score, CiteScore, SCImago Journal Rank, Source-
Normalised Impact per Paper, and others. Furthermore, there
is also the H-index, which is used to evaluate the ‘impact’ of an
individual, but it can also be applied to groups such as research
groups, departments and faculties. More recently, alternative
metrics (altmetrics) has also come to the fore. This involves the
use of social media. For example, even tweets or Facebook likes
that an article receives are recorded.
As indicated above, there are many approaches to defining a
journal’s impact. However, put the name of a medical journal
in a Google search line and, invariably, besides a clickable list
containing the likely journal and some other possibilities, a
frame appears on the right side of the screen with three pieces of
information, the name of the journal, the JIF and the name of
the editor. It may or may not contain other details. So, although
this number is not the alpha and omega,
1
it does carry a lot of
weight.
I remember distinctly how the editor of the
European Heart
Journal
(EHJ), William Wijns, proudly mentioned at the South
African Heart Congress in 2017 that the EHJ now had a JIF
higher than that of
Circulation
. At the same congress, the editor
of the
Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation
(JHLT) argued
that the JIF of JHLT, of around seven at that time, was good,
given the highly specialised group it is aimed at, implying that
general popularity plays an important role.
In 2013 the CVJA drew attention to the curious case of a
lesser-known journal, the
CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians
(CA-AC) that had the highest JIF (2018: 223.679) with a massive
margin above the world’s most well-known general medical
journal, the
New England Journal of Medicine
(NJEM) (2018:
70.670).
3,6
To give some perspective, in 2017, CA-AC published
27 articles and the NEJM 327. The CA-AC had 4 089 citations.
However a single article, Cancer statistics 2017, is published
annually and is responsible for more than 60% of all citations.
NEJM had many more citations, namely 22 189 and 327 articles,
but the ratio of citations to articles was less. It is an issue of
ratios, not popularity.
While listening to the editors at the 2018 Heart Congress, I
thought about how in Africa, we compete in a small fishbowl,
but there is an ocean out there. With a JIF just above one, rank-
wise the CVJA lay third among the 14 medical journals from
Africa that are listed on JCR.
7
However, in the cardiovascular
field, the CVJA is alone. When a year later a JIF of 1.41 placed
the CVJA first among the African medical journals,
6
I felt proud
but at the same time, sad.
From Africa, only 68 journals (social sciences included) are
listed with the WOS, appear in the JCR and therefore have a JIF.
With more than 12 500 journals listed in this index, that is 0.54%
of the indexed journals.
6
By contrast, Africa has more than 1.3
billion people, equal to 16.72% of the world’s population.
8
Of
the 68 journals, CVJA ranks ninth but is top of the 14 medical
journals and, furthermore, is the only listed cardiovascular
journal. First among the 68 African journals is the
Journal of
Advanced Research
, an Egyptian journal, with a JIF of 5.045.
Within South Africa, and more specifically the Western Cape,
where the office of the CVJA is, the higher ranking accorded the
South African Journal of Enology and Viticulture
(JIF 1.692)
6
may
be appropriate. After all the Western Cape is world renowned for
its vineyards and wine. However, sitting on a university library
committee, I learnt that in certain areas, law for instance, citation
analysis is of peripheral interest.
So although CVJA was the number one medical journal in
Africa for 2018, with a JIF of 1.410, we must remember that
globally, Africa, although very populous, is a small player.
Citations to CVJA articles have increased from 370 in 2014 to
899 in 2018, with quite a dramatic increase since 2017. Credit
goes to Professor Patrick Commerford, editor of the CVJA.
We also thank the authors who publish articles in the CVJA,
articles that attract an increasing number of citations. We need
to develop globally recognised institutions in Africa.
Paul A Brink
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Stellenbosch
continued on page 320…
2000
1500
1000
500
0
100
75
50
25
0
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Journal impact factor
Percentile rank in category (%)
Journal impact factor
Cardiac & cardiovascular systems
Fig. 1.
Five-year trend of the journal impact factor for the
Cardiovascular Journal of Africa
.
6