“In 1955, it did not occur to me that ‘impact’ would one day become so controversial. Like nuclear energy, the impact factor is a mixed blessing; I expected it to be used constructively while recognizing that in the wrong hands it might be abused.”

The academic community, including researchers, editors, and scholars, relies on knowledge exchange and the dissemination of innovative research. 1-3 For this community, publishing papers in a reputable journal is an indication of the quality and impact of their study. . .

The academic community, such as researchers, editors, and scholars relies on knowledge exchange and the spreading of innovative research. 1-3 For this community, the publication of their papers in a reputable journal is evidence of the quality and influence of their study. One vital step in this journey is receiving the first impact factor for a journal. The presence of an impact factor improves the visibility of journals among researchers, organizations, decision-makers, and policy-makers...

Introduction: In the current study, we compared h5-index provided by Google Scholar (GS), impact factor (IF) provided by web of sciences (WOS), and SCImago journal rank indicator (SJR) provided by SCOPUS for quality assessment of nuclear medicine journals.Methods: 2013 h5-index, 2012 IF, and 2011 SJR of nuclear medicine journals were extracted from their publishers namely GS, WOS, and SCOPUS. Rank of each journal according to each index was provided. Spearman correlation was used for evaluation of the correlation between metrics.Results: Overall 22 journals were identified. Spearman correlation coefficients between h5-index and other journal metrics were 0.907 for 2012 IF, 0.979 for 2011 JCR, and 0.978 for 2011 SCOPUS h-index (all p-values<0.00001). Wilcoxon signed ranks test showed no statistically meaningful difference between rankings according to h5-index and other journal metrics (p values of 0.589, 0.565, and 0.542 for 2012 IF, 2011 SJR, and 2011 SCOPUS h-index respectively).Conclusion: The new GS journal metrics are reliable tools for quality assessment of the nuclear medicine journals. In our opinion, h5-index, IF, and SJR should be used in a combination as their combination would give a more holistic view of journal quality. Development of new journal metrics in addition to SJR and IF by GS should be welcomed by the scientific community.

Background: An increase in the number of medical schools in Iran has caused a conspicuous escalation in medical research during recent years with the numbers of papers published in Iranian and international biomedical journals increasing annually. In addition to quantitative indices, the evaluation of medical research in Iran requires qualitative parameters. The aim of this study is the qualitative assessment of medical research in Iran regarding, specifically, one of its outputs; Le. papers published in international journalsand its comparison to medical research in Pakistan and Egypt.Materials and methods: Papers published in international journals from Iran, Pakistan and Egypt in 1992, 1996, 1999, and 2002 were acquired through searching in PubMed databank. To evaluate the quality of papers, we used the impact factor (IF) of journals publishingthe paper. The IF of journals was obtained through the official site of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and the mean IF for these 3 countries was calculated separately.Results: In 1992, the numbers of indexed papers from Iran, Pakistan and Egypt were 61, 82 and 387, respectively. The mean IF of journals publishing Iranian papers was 1.13±0.94 in 1992, being 1.25±.15 for Pakistan and 1.11±1.64 for Egypt. In 2002, numbers of indexed papers from Iran, Pakistan and Egypt were 508, 229 and 668, respectively. In the same year, the mean IF of journals publishing Iranian papers was 1.36±0.98 while it was 1.75±2.88 for Pakistan and 1.23±1.57 for Egypt. The obtained results showed 733% quantitative growth of Iranian papers during the 1992-2002 period, which was noticeably higher than Egypt and Pakistan.Also, the mean IF of journals publishing Iranian papers increased from 1.13 to 1.36 during that period.Conclusion: Upgrading of the IF of journals publishing Iranian papers may indicate enhancement of the quality of those papers, i.e. Iranian research, now enhanced, is eligible for publication in journals with higher IFs. It must however be kept in mind that on the whole, the mean IF of journals could have increased during that period. The results of this investigation lead us to conclude that medical research in Iran, as compared to Pakistan and Egypt, has definitely progressed quantitatively during the years 1992-2002 and it can also be claimed, at least, that the quality of research has not declined during these years.