Impact Factor List 2016 available

The list generated from the Journal Citation Report is now available. You can download the list here: Journalindex_2016_komplett

You can sort by the field of interest. Please explore the features of this comprehensive list.

Best Jürgen

 

 

Target Journal by Jane

Jane might be much stronger than Tarzan. Especially in terms of a research tool for getting ideas about a suitable target journal Jane is really powerful. You can enter your abstract to Jane (Journal Author Name Estimator) and there are suggestions for journals, other relevant persons in the field, etc. And the best thing is: You do not have to visit the jungle – Jane ist here.

Best wishes, Jürgen

 

Upload on Research Gate: Check SHERPA ROMEO

You might want to share your achievements with the scientific community. Therefore Research Gate offers many tools, but legal problems might be present.

Question: Can I upload the PDF of my paper to Research Gate?

Answer (Head of Institute): Only if you published open access. Otherwise NO!! Legal problems….

Answer (Co-Worker): Yes of course. Maybe you can just upload the preprint (the MS as WORD File in the latest version).

Answer (your best friend): Yes of course. Don’t care about copyright. We are living in a free world. A PDF of the printed version is fine!!

These answers might be initially of help but are highly depending on the person you ask. A more reliable information is given on SHERPA ROMEO. For every publisher, journal, etc. the regulations are summarized and you can look up if your decision on upload was fine. You should do this in advance since the WWW does never forget any shared item.

Happy sharing, Jürgen

 

 

 

Ethics approval

Dear all,

regulations about ethics are becoming more clear but unfortunately also challenging and time consuming. Therefore three aspects to keep in mind before you start a study:

1. If human participants are included in a study an ethical approval is necessary
2. The ethics committee of hospitals, institutions, universities might be sufficient for internal purposes. However, for publishing this might be different and Editors might ask for a “more formal” assessment.
3. Resources: Ethics committees ask for money. An ethical approval takes time until the final decision is made. You have to invest some time in creating all files and filling in all forms.

A discussion on such issues was recently published in the BMJ.

Best wishes

 

Jürgen

Track your target journal

It can be important to be up to date about recent publications in your target journal. You can either bookmark the target journal and look up new publication by hand. But electronic searches might be also of help, especially if you have more than one target journal in mind.

A short video shows you the important steps in PUBMED to set up such a tracking procedure.

Best wishes

Jürgen

Impact Factor list 2013 available

Please find Journalindex_2013_komplett which is a updated xls sheet with
a list of IF for selected scientific fields (humanities, social science).

Maybe this list can help you to broaden the
scope of available journals in your field. There a sooo many.
One of them might be a good match with your material!

Best wishes, Jürgen

Neurosex

I came across this publication in JAMA Psychiatry which did a really good job in the combination of topics. Sex and Neuroscience. Even better, not only the common sex – it was porn use. The paper was entitled
Brain Structure and Functional Connectivity Associated With Pornography Consumption:The Brain on Porn

Wow – that’s a headline. Maybe you can imagine what the cue stimulus was in this study.

See reference

I am not sure about better combinations of topics. Maybe “personalised medicine” and “porn addiction”, or “big data” and “neurosex”. We will see. I will keep you updated on the “most recent developments”.

Best Jürgen

Shanghai Ranking

I think for breaks at work you can consider to explore the new Shanghai Ranking. It might be time consuming to understand the entire system of criteria and procedures. Nevertheless it might give you an impression of the daily business of your dean of you faculty or the president of your University. If your University is doing well you will receive this information via press anyway. If you do not get any information, maybe the ranking was not that good.

Have fun in exploring the statistics, which is an easy ranking from
number one to infinity. Jürgen

Social media for dummies

Social media have become a new tool to get publicity. Some journals run their own social media divisions. Some researcher are very keen to be represented in social media by their own blogs or tweets. However, there are different options around and the decision for a specific type of social media requires some thinking.

The decision which tool might be appropriate to communicate about science with which audience is really difficult and any effort is limited by available resources. A recently published paper in PloS Biology summarizes pros and cons of different options. Maybe this an entry point for you to go this way – maybe this is the stopping point to end with rumination about the question “Should I invest time in social media?” by answering this question with NO.

Here is the paper.Quite short. Well written.

Enjoy reading, Jürgen

Corrections of proofs

An accepted manuscript will be send to a type setting service and you will receive the typeset proofs of your manuscript. Sometimes very important things like tables, figures, headings are missing. But also minor changes might be required.

Nowadays PDF proofs allow you to work electronically on these proofs. But sometimes extensive changes are needed which can not be insert in the proof itself and additional handwritten feedback is required. For such purposes there are “codes” you should use for such corrections. You find a list of such codes here (GERMAN) or here (ENGLISH).

I wish you many proofs with a low number of errors.

Best, Jürgen