Comparing 'papers cited rates' with other measures for science journal evaluation

ABSTRACTThirty‐six ophthalmology journals indexed by the Science Citation Index (SCI) in 2003 were selected to study the role of the ‘papers cited rate’ in scientific journal evaluation. The 2‐year, 3‐year, 5‐year, 8‐year, and 10‐year cited rates of these papers were calculated to analyze statistically the correlations with impact factor, 5‐year impact factor, immediacy index, eigenfactor score, article influence score, and total cites. The results of questionnaires sent to 8,525 ophthalmologists were used to analyse the correlations between the papers cited rates for different years and traditional bibliometric indicators. The results showed that eigenfactor score and total cites were better than other indicators, and impact factor was better than the 5‐year impact factor. The 2‐year and 3‐year cited rates of papers were reasonable for evaluating science journals, and the 2‐year cited rate was better than the 3‐year cited rate. The 5‐year (and more than 5 years) cited rates were not significant in evaluating science journals.