ate:    Sat, 16 Nov 1996 01:10:07 -0500
From:    Jean-Christophe Joyeux 
Subject: Top ecology journals->opinion

Dear ecologgers,

        I am a fisheries/fish biology postdoc at NC State University, and
new subscriber to the list. I apologize in advance is the following
subjects have previously been raised. I think the topics have general
interrest and would like to see them discussed on the list. I will forward
all personal responses to the list.

        As you all know, SCI has become a reference when it comes to
judging past and present performance of numerous scientists. Without
denying the quality and scientific influence of the journals listed in SCI,
one wonders about the actual representativeness of the ranking, and
therefore the representativeness of the selected criteria for ranking
journals.
        One of these criteria, although not acknowledged by SCI, is obvious
to non-English speakers: non-English journals are extremely poorly
represented in both the top ranked journals of any specialty and in the
whole listing for most specialties. See exemple below! Now, I understand
not everybody is able to read/write French or Thai and that one or a few
common languages are necessary. In that respect, English is possibly as
good as any other. I do not think the absentees are worse than the listed
journals, science-wise. In any case, this encourages numerous scientists to
publish in "international" (according to SCI: English writing) journals in
order to be recognized by their peers. And this is a good thing as it
increases the abundance and the diversity of available thinking. The
pervese effect is that this practice constantly reenforces the dominance of
few "international" journals, which is detrimental at local levels, on both
journals and science. Publishing in a good local journal looses appeal no
most scientists because the researcher's worthiness is more and more
evaluated from his/her number of internationally recognized publications
(i.e. in English). Moreover, significant contributions on the regional
levels that are not on the "cutting edge" in the field probably do not make
it to international journals. They are, however, getting worthless in terms
of scientific recognition. This is, I am sure, true for ecology, but
probably much less so for experimental sub-atomic physics.  Are we not
cutting ourselves off something important ?
        From these premises derives another observation, implications of
which are in my opinion much more disturbing: SCI seems to mostly check
English-language journals for the provenance of references. I may be wrong,
but it sure looks that way. For countries and languages which have a
(relatively) small "native-reading" populations of scientists, such
under-representation is probably understandable. The bias is obvious in
other cases, and I am not ready to believe that Russian (or Chinese)
scientists do not write, nor read, nor refer to Russian (or Chinese)
literature...

        Finally, I would like to specifically access my  huge US audience.
You are living in a country built by immigrants from all over the world, in
which an extremely large part of the population is first or second
generation. I have been amazed by the large number of people who studied
foreign (i.e. non-English) languages at school for one or more years, often
volontarily, or knew a foreign language from family. Yet, overall, you do
not read non-English journals (and therefore do not refer to non-English
papers). Why ? As I said earlier, I do not believe non-English journals are
bad or uninteresting... Please understand that I AM NOT FLAMMING ANYBODY !
I want to get a feeling of how you think about yourself in that respect,
and possibly what others think about the subject. I have been in the US for
5 years, I have discussed the subject almost endlessly with both Americans
and non-Americans, and still I cannot figure out an answer that is not a
little offensive: bare, simple laziness. And I understand: I had to read
papers in English when my English was terrible ! I  also have a lot of
trouble with Latin languages other than French. It is an exhauting task !
However, all over the world scientists do struggle with language(s) they do
not master... My personal opinion on that matter is this may be due to
three basic causes. 1- that the US is too big a country: few people travel,
see something different until relatively late in life; 2- the US is the
greatest country on Earth, i.e. the others are not much; 3- from the day
you are born, nothing encourages you to think otherwise: not the media
(especially them), not the lawmakers/politicians, not the scientists. In
this very specific context not your family, even if your parents are not
American-born. I have been extremely surprised to see how fast immigrants'
children get "sucked" into the system. I suppose this is normal integration
and happens everywhere. I was just not conscious of it when I was in
France.

Any thoughts ?

Jean-Christophe


>Dear Wendee:
>I had to look this up myself, so here goes: I checked the Journal
>Citation Reports (1994), which I think is a branch of the Science
>Citation Index. One of the factors they use to rank journals is the
>'impact factor', related to the number of times that journal has been
>cited in articles (the higher the impact factor, the more cited the
>journal).
>
>The top few ecology journals were, in descending order of impact (a
>couple of microbiology type journals in between might be omitted):
>
>Ecological Monographs
>Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics
>Trends in Ecology and Evolution
>Wildlife Monographs
>American Naturalist
>Advances in Ecological Research
>Ecology
>Journal of Animal Ecology
>Evolution
>Evolutionary Ecology
>Oikos
>Journal of Ecology
>Conservation Biology
>Oecologia
>Journal of Evolutionary Biology
>Vegetatio
>Journal of Applied Ecology
>Biotropica
>Biodiversity and Conservation
>Journal of Biogeography
>Biological Conservation
>Journal of Tropical Ecology
>etc.
>
>Cheers,
>Aviva Patel
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Aviva Patel, Ph.D.
>Ecosystem Health
>Faculty of Environmental Sciences
>Guelph, Ontario
>Canada N1G 2W1
>
>Tel: (519)824-4120, x3704
>Fax: (519)763-4686
>email: apatel@envsci.uoguelph.ca


****************************************
Dr. Jean-Christophe Joyeux
North Carolina State University
Dept. Zoology, box 7617
Raleigh NC 27695
tel 919 515 4593
****************************************

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Date:    Fri, 15 Nov 1996 17:01:15 -0500
F