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Taking advantage of this opportunity, Xu Qiu also took advantage of the opportunity to learn about the division of SCI periodicals.

For a long time, there are two types of SCI journal divisions that have a wide impact:

The first type is the division established by Thomson Reuters (Thomson Reuters), which is generally updated at the end of June each year; the second type is the division established by the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (referred to as the division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences), which is generally updated at the end of October each year.

These two division methods are based on the impact factors of journals included in SCI, but the specific calculation methods and division basis are different.

Thomson Reuters publishes a "Journal Citation Reports" (JCR for short) every year. JCR will count the impact factors and other indexes of the SCI journals included in it, and finally divide the included journals into 176 different subject categories.

According to the impact factor of journals, each subject category is "on average" divided into four areas: Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4:

That is, the journals with the top 25% (including 25%) of the impact factors in each subject classification are divided into the Q1 area, the top 25%-50% (including 50%) are the Q2 area, and the top 50%-75% (including 75%) are the Q3 area , after 75% is the Q4 area.

Obviously, the number of journals in the Thomson Reuters divisions is evenly divided into four parts, with an equal number of journals in each division.

The division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences refers to the JCR division, and divides the journals counted in the JCR into mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geosciences, astronomy, engineering technology, medicine, environmental science, agriculture and forestry science, social science, management science and comprehensive journals. kind.

Then, each of the 13 categories of periodicals is divided into 4 levels, that is, 4 districts.

The standard way of writing the divisions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is the 1, 2, 3, and 4 districts of Arabic numerals, but sometimes they are also written as the 1, 2, 3, and 4 districts of Chinese characters.

The zoning design idea of ​​the Chinese Academy of Sciences began in early 2000, aiming to correct the domestic scientific research community’s neglect of the numerical differences in the impact factors of journals of different disciplines.

In other words, scientific researchers at that time judged the quality of a journal almost only by the impact factor, thinking that a high impact factor was powerful.

This is obviously not objective enough.

Because this evaluation method ignores the differences between different disciplines.

For example, the impact factors of basic subjects such as mathematics and physics are generally low, while the impact factors of applied chemistry and engineering technology are generally high.

The purpose of partitioning is to allow journals in the same field to conduct internal PK.

For example, compare chemistry journals with chemistry journals, compare physics and mathematics journals with physics and mathematics journals, and then decide which one is superior.

As for the specific division, the official statement is:

The partition table of the Chinese Academy of Sciences chooses academic influence as the division method, and divides all journals of each discipline into 4 districts according to their academic influence, that is, the 3-year average impact factor (IF) in descending order from high to low, so that "each division The sum of journal impact is the same".

Due to the "skewed distribution" of the 3-year IFs of journals within disciplines, this results in "a very small number of journals in Region 1".

In order to ensure the number of periodicals in Zone 1, journals in Zone 1 take 5% of the total number of journals in the entire discipline, that is, the journals with the highest 5% average IF in 3 years are journals in Zone 1.

Journals in districts 2, 3, and 4 are divided in the same way as the sum of the 3-year average IF.

The specific method is as follows:

1. Arrange the collection of journals of each discipline (the number is n) in descending order according to the 3-year average IF, and the calculations in the following steps are based on this order.

2. The top 5% journals (5% of the total number of journals in this discipline, that is, 5%*n) are journals in District 1.

3. For the remaining 95% of journals, calculate the sum S of their 3-year average IF, and then calculate 1/3 of the sum, that is, S/3. The cumulative sum of journal influence in each of the remaining 3 districts is S/3.

4. For the collection of periodicals in the previous step, that is, in the collection of periodicals except periodicals in District 1, count from the first periodical backward, if the sum S2 of their 3-year average IF is equal to the sum S/3 calculated in the previous step , then these journals are periodicals in zone 2; periodicals in zone 3 can be divided in the same way, and all remaining journals are periodicals in zone 4, that is, S2=S3=S4=S/3.

The official statement is more complicated, Xu Qiu found the specific statistics directly:

Among the 13 major categories, there are 1,860 engineering and technical journals in total, of which 117 are in the first district, 270 in the second district, 387 in total, and 6.29 in the first district %, the number of journals in the second district accounted for 14.52%, and the total number of periodicals in the first and second districts accounted for 20.81%.

The values ​​of these items of chemical journals are: 357 in total, 25 in the first district, 54 in the second district, 79 in total in the first and second districts, 7.00% in the first district, 15.13% in the second district, and 22.13 in the first and second districts %.

Xu Qiu browsed the data of other major categories. Although the specific proportions of each major category were different, the overall difference was not obvious.

In general, the journals with the top 5% impact factor in each category belong to the category 1, 6%-20% of the journals belong to the category 2, 21%-50% of the journals belong to the category 3, and the rest of the journals belong to the category The category is Zone 4.

It can be roughly understood that the average level of articles published in journals in the first district is the top 5% in the same field, exceeding 95% of other articles in the same field, and the average level of articles published in journals in the second district is in the same field It's the top 20%, and so on...

This partitioning method of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has resulted in very few journals in Zone 1 and Zone 2 of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, while the number of journals in Q1 of the Thomson Reuters zone is far more than that of the journals in Zone 1 of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Therefore, some articles published by some people will be counted as the first district according to the JCR journal division standard of Thomson Reuters, and the second district or even the third district according to the division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

However, this partitioning method is very in line with the national conditions of flower growers, and can better motivate researchers to engage in scientific research and publish articles.

But it will also cause some problems.

For example, shortly after the publication of the "Journal Division Table of the Documentation and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences", it aroused heated discussions among scientific researchers.

Most of them are complaints, and someone even made a series of emoticons:

Pandaren A: "How is your research work this year?"

Pandaren B: "Hey, it's not good, so I posted three articles."

Pandaren A: "Oh, that's really not good, what kind of publications are they?"

Pandaren B: "Nature Communications (NC), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Science Advances (SA)."

Pandaren A: "...!!"

The jokes are just jokes, and the academic level and influence of the three journals of NC, PNAS, and SA are self-evident.

Out of this kind of weird partition, the "professionalism" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences partition has naturally been criticized. For example, Nanan University of Technology stated that it will switch to the JCR partition as the journal partition standard.

Of course, there must be a certain basis for the Chinese Academy of Sciences to divide in this way.

The biggest reason for the downgrade of these three journals may be the small number of comprehensive journals in the journal division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the serious outage.

In recent years, there have been less than 60 comprehensive journals in the division. In principle, the division is based on the top 5% of the major disciplines. After calculation, there should be 3 journals in the comprehensive division 1, and the fluctuation should not exceed 1.

Although SA is a sub-journal of "Science", it only officially had an impact factor the year before, so it was not included in the journal division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences before.

It will be officially included in the division this year, so the question is, where should it be placed?

In the previous division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the comprehensive area 1 was the "Four Diamonds": "Nature", "Science", NC, and PNAS.

The emergence of SA has made it difficult for the journals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to be partitioned. Let’s put it in one area. There are too many 3 that exceed the standard;

Putting it in the second district, it is about the same level as NC, and the SA impact factor of the second district is higher than that of the PNAS in the first district, which seems not suitable.

Moreover, even in the "Four King Kongs" in the first district, the word-of-mouth standards of "Nature" and "Science" far surpassed PNAS and NC, with a gap in the middle.

Therefore, the division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences simply opened up the distinction this time, and only placed Top2 in the first district.

Then, 3 similar journals were placed in the second district, plus a review journal National Science Review "National Science Review", a total of 4 second district journals.

In this way, the values ​​of these items for comprehensive major journals are: 54 in total, 2 in the first district, 4 in the second district, 6 in total in the first and second districts, 3.70% in the first district, 7.41% in the second district, and 7.41% in the first district. The total proportion of the second district is 11.11%.

Although in this way, the proportion of journals in the first and second districts is much less than 20% of other major categories, but it is mainly to distinguish it from Scientific Reports, which has dropped to the third district.

"Scientific Reports" is a new journal under the "Nature" Publishing House. Originally, the target was NC, and it was called "Little NC" when it was promoted.

As soon as the impact factor came out, good guy, it was around 5, less than half of NC. In addition, there were few comprehensive journals, so it was directly sent to the third district and became one of the "water journals".

Another possible reason for the Chinese Academy of Sciences to make such a partition decision is that these journals charge too much page fee every year.

PNAS, it is a journal of the National Academy of Sciences in the beautiful country. Although the impact factor is not high, only about 10, it is also recognized as one of the four famous journals in the world, namely "Nature", "Science", "Cell", and PNAS. classic periodicals.

In the past two years, a total of 874 articles have been published in China. PNAS non-OA (open source) page fee is 1640 dollars, OA articles are 2200 dollars, and the average is 2000 dollars. This is 1.7 million dollars, which is 11.72 million soft sister coins .

Considering the academic reputation of PNAS in the world, this price is acceptable.

But NC and SA burn too much money.

SA, in the two years when it was first published without an impact factor, the number of articles published in China ranked third in the world, lower than that of the beautiful country and Germany, but after two years with the impact factor, the number of articles by flower growers jumped over Germany.

SA is an OA journal, and the page fee for each article is 4,500 dollars. Domestic scholars have published more than 300 articles in the past two years, which is 1.4 million dollars, which costs about 9.65 million soft sister coins.

The most powerful is NC, with a page fee of 5,200 knives.

A total of 2,000 papers have been published on NC in China in the past two years, and the page fee is 5200*2000=more than 10 million US dollars, which is nearly 70 million RMB, which is still very exaggerated.

The aforementioned "Scientific Report" under "Nature" has also been downgraded to the third district.

Therefore, the zoning of the Chinese Academy of Sciences this time may also be a guide. The scientific research funds given by the state are not spent on the editors-in-chief of those journals.

In fact, it is also a kind of helplessness. In the era of peace, many established rules, especially international rules involving multilateral countries, are really difficult to change.

PS: In reality, the downgrade of NC and PNAS occurred in 2018, and in the second year, that is, in 2019, the division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reclassified NC, SA, and PNAS into the first comprehensive category. At the same time, "National Science Review" and Sci. Bull. were also pulled in, and a total of 7 comprehensive category 1 journals were produced.

PS2: Sci. Bull., originally called Chinese Science Bulletin, namely "Florist Science Bulletin", was later renamed Science Bulletin, namely "Science Bulletin". This is the only comprehensive SCI academic journal of natural science in my country. It was regarded as an area on the back door, because the impact factor was only around 6. However, the whole country is promoting a journal, and many bigwigs have published articles on it, and the quality is improving year by year. According to the latest data in 2021, the impact factor of this journal is already 9.5, but I want to be recognized by international colleagues. There is still a long way to go.

PS3: Today is the beginning of the month, and it’s still Monday, so I ask for recommendation tickets, monthly tickets, and support~