Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to analyze the Italian journals indexed in the 2000 edition of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) (Philadelphia, USA). The performance and the visibility of these journals were evaluated in terms of Impact Factor (IF), mean IF from citing journals and cited journals, and self-citing and self-cited rates.
Seventy-three Italian journals were indexed in the JCR, 14 of which achieved an IF equal to or higher than one. Most citing journals were European and American, thus showing a fairly good visibility of the articles published in the 14 journals analyzed. The self-citing and self-cited rates showed a wide variation. The journal that appeared to perform best was theJournal of High Energy Physics, an electronic publication whose success seemingly confirms Internet circulation as an effective means to enhance the visibility and consequently the quality, in term of citations, of a journal.
Italy's low overall expenditure on research & development (R&D) and low number of researchers compared to countries with longstanding high publishing standards and traditions are no doubt partly to blame for its poor performance in scientific publishing.
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Ugolini, D., Casilli, C. The visibility of Italian journals. Scientometrics 56, 345–355 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022326820017
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022326820017