BLOG BUZZ

摘要

First, let me make a bold admission-the kind that works perfectly for a tweet: "I was wrong." In a previous post, I claimed that a precipitous February drop in PLOS ONE article output was the result of a decline in their last Impact Factor. Authors (even those supportive of open access publishing) are sensitive to journal Impact Factors, so a drop in PLOS ONE'S Impact Factor (from 4.092 to 3.730), reported last June would eventually show up as a drop in publication output 5-6 months later as manuscripts slowly move through their publication process. My argument was built upon the economic concept of a leading indicator, the idea that future performance is often preceded by early changes in key metrics. As PLOS ONE has already shown that its authors were highly sensitive to its Impact Factor, flooding the journal with submissions shortly after they received their first substantial Impact Factor, I predicted that authors would begin to abandon the journal when that indicator started to turn south. It looks like I was wrong … but not totally incorrect.