With the official release of the impact factor every year, JCR will also release the list of suppressed journals . Today we will take a look at the situation of 2022 JCR.
The 2019JCR, 2020JCR, and 2021JCR suppressed 33, 10, and 3 journals, respectively. Overall, fewer and fewer journals were suppressed. The 2022 JCR released this year only suppressed 4 journals. It can be seen that under the supervision mechanism of JCR, the operation of journals is becoming more and more standardized in general.
On June 28, Clarivate Analytics released the 2023 Journal Citation Report (JCR), in which 4 journals had their impact factors revoked due to abnormal citation patterns, excluding Chinese journals.
Four journals were suppressed this year , namely:
• Marketing Theory, a business journal published by SAGE ( high self-citations suppressed )
• Genetika published by the Genetics Society of Serbia ( reference stacking suppressed )
• Bioscience Research by Pakistani publisher ISISnet ( citation stacking suppressed )
• Bioinspired, Biomimetic, and Nanobiomaterials by ICE Publishing, UK ( citation stacking suppressed )
To ensure fairness in journal selection and reporting, Clarivate Analytics insists on monitoring and eliminating journals with abnormal citations, including excessive self-citation, citation stacking and self-stacking ) journals.
Excessive self-citation (self-citation) , that is, an article published in a journal cites an excessive number of articles from the same journal;
Marketing Theory, whose self-citation rate reached 34% . This self-citation rate seems relatively high, but why are some journals with a self-citation rate as high as 40% not suppressed? This mainly involves a concept of ranking distortion, that is, the change in the ranking of journals in their respective disciplines before and after eliminating self-citation shadow factors . Due to self-citation problems, Marketing Theory's ranking in the field of business is distorted by 27%. It should be known that last year the Chinese Journal of Organic Chemistry and the Indian Journal of Microbiology had sorting distortions of 25% and 22%, respectively, and they had been suppressed.
Citation stacking refers to the abnormal citation behavior that results in a disproportionate number of citations in two or more journals.
To put it simply, it is serious mutual citation between journals . For example, I founded two journals A and B. A vigorously cites B’s articles, and B crazily cites A’s articles. The self-citations of these two journals are indeed not high, but It belongs to coordinated cheating and is also the target of suppression.
Genetika-Belgrade and Bioscience Research in these three books are serious mutual references . 36% of Genetika-Belgrade's citations come from Bioscience Research, and 100% of Bioscience Research's citations to Genetika-Belgrade are concentrated in the current year.
Self-stacking , that is, most of the citation records of a journal during the impact factor calculation period come from its own published articles.
Last year was the first time Self-Stacking was proposed, when 6 journals were warned for self-stacking. From 2023, Self-Stacking journals will also be suppressed, but this year there are no journals that have been suppressed for Self-Stacking.
1.Marketing Theory《Marketing Theory》
ISSN：1470-5931
eISSN： 1741-301X
Publisher: SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC.
Index：SSCI
Reason for being suppressed: excessive self-citation, among the 20 journals citing the most Marketing Theory, Marketing Theory has the largest number of citations, resulting in excessive self-citation.
2.Bioinspired Biomimetic and Nanobiomaterials
Bioinspired biomimetic and nanobiomaterials
ISSN：2045-9858
eISSN： 2045-9866
Publisher: ICE PUBLISHING
Index：SCIE
Reason for suppression: Citation stacking
3. Genetika-Belgrade "Genetics-Belgrade"
ISSN：0534-0012
eISSN： 1820-6069
Publisher: SERBIAN GENETICS SOC
Index：SCIE
Reason for suppression: Citation stacking
The journal Genetika-Belgrade was also directly marked "On Hold" by Clarivate Analytics.
4. Bioscience Research
ISSN：1811-9506
eISSN： 2218-3973
Publisher: INNOVATIVE SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION & SERVICES NETWORK
Index：ESCI
Reason for suppression: Citation stacking
Two points to note:
① Being suppressed does not mean being kicked out of SCI, but the impact factor is not announced this year. For example, the three journals that were suppressed last year all regained their impact factors this year;
② After the suppression of journals, there is still an opportunity to appeal. If the appeal is passed, an impact factor will be obtained.
In addition, according to the Clarivate Analytics statement, some journals lack the content required to calculate the journal impact factor or other indicators, and need to submit supplementary data before August 4, 2023. Therefore, the JCR report may publish a revised version after August 4, 2023.
• Pay attention to the official account: Unionpub Academic , learn more about dry scientific research, published cases in the same field, and information on key journals