Archive for februari 2009
Impact factor of PLoS ONE
Background Me and Björn has a bet on the impact factor of the journal PLoS ONE. PLoS ONE utilizes a new concept within publishing.The journal does not exclude any article based on percieved interest but publish everything that is technologically sound. As expected a lot of rubbish has ended up in the journal. Meanwhile, the journal has recieved a fair amount of publicity and PLoS has a good reputation. The bet was set as if PLoS gets an IF >1.2, Björn owes me a pizza, otherwise I owe Björn a pizza. As I’m impatient for ISI to calculate the IFs I’ve done it myself.
Method The citation report of all articles published in 2007 in PLoS ONE were retrieved using Google Scholar. Average number of citations were calculated using a simple perl script. As a a benchmark of the method the impact factor of BMC Genomics were calculated using the same approach.
Results Using the above mentioned method the IF of BMC Genomics was 4.90 for articles published in 2007. This is in line with their offical impact factor (4.18). Plos ONE had an Impact factor of 5.68.
Conclusion Well done PLoS ONE. Pizza for me.
