More Transparency is Needed When Citing h-Indexes, Journal Impact Factors and CiteScores

Abstract

h-indexes, Journal Impact Factors and CiteScores are often presented as a single numeric value, without providing any context. Under such circumstances, the reader is unable to fully appreciate, or comprehend, the information being presented. By not being transparent, it also presents the opportunity for unscrupulous operators, such as predatory journals, to provide non-sensical information in the hope that the potential author will misinterpret it and submit an article in the expectation that they are submitting to a high-quality journal. Dubious metrics are also able to enter the sector, again in the hope that their metric will be read under an incorrect assumption. Following an overview of the main metrics that are commonly used, this paper suggests how these metrics should be cited. Adopting these proposals would not only provide the reader will full information but also enable bogus measures, which have proliferated in recent years, to be recognized more easily.