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37/49 BLOG on Mathematical Journals

http://blog.mathunion.org, Posted on November 18, 2011

Information technology is changing the journal publication landscape in many ways. Some changes are all for the better; for instance, the availabil- ity of electronic versions of a paper makes the content much more widely accessible.

Other changes are more controversial, or even almost uni- versally condemned. Calls have been made for professional societies to formulate official positions on some of these.

In order to assess the views of the international mathe- matical community on journal-related issues, IMU (INTER- NATIONAL MATHEMATICAL UNION) and ICIAM (THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR INDUSTRIAL AND APPLIED MATHEMATICS) have created the BLOG on Mathematical Journals that will be hosted by the IMU web- site

An important issue that IMU and ICIAM want to address is JOURNAL RATING.

The past few decades have seen the emergence of indices or factors that try to quantify this information, by tracking various quantitative statistics. This has resulted in ratings of journals, which are then used (and misused) in a variety of ways. In response to this, the General Assembly of the IMU passed in August 2010 the resolution. . . to create a Working Group jointly with ICIAM to study this issue and to suggest a different ways of journal ranking.

The joint Working Group created by the IMU and ICIAM has complete its work and has made a REPORT:

38/49 . . .

We propose that each rated journals be assigned to one of four tiers.

• Tier 1: A top journal in mathematics or a major subfield of it. Almost all papers published are of very high quality, and it regularly publishes papers that are of great signiifi- cance. Peer-review is applied consistently and rigorously, and editorial work is carried out by leading mathemati- cians.

• Tier 2: Very strong journal with a carefully run and re- liable peer-review process. Papers are generally of high quality, and regularly papers are published which are of significant importance in at least a subfield of mathemat- ics.

• Tier 3: Solid journal that generally publishes reputable work and follows accepted practices of peer review, but are generally less selective than journals of Tier 2, and paper quality is more variable. Such journals may play an important role in specific communities, but are usu- ally not considered highly important to mathematics or a subfield globally.

• Tier 4: Journals not found to meet the standards of the other tiers.

. . .

A first public forum on the report, at a minisymposium at the ICIAM conference in July 2011, showed that the issue and the report evoked strong reactions in many different directions. In order to get a wider community response, it was decided to open a blog in which all mathematicians could contribute their views on the recommendations of the report.

39/49 We invite the mathematical community to provide their views on the

journal rating issue, and on whether IMU and ICIAM should formulate their own rating. Views on how to establish and update this rating would also be welcome.

The Moderating Group (appointed by ICIAM and IMU jointly) con- sists of Doug Arnold, Carol Hutchins, Nalini Joshi, Peter Olver, Fabrice Planchon and Tao Tang, with Peter Olver as chair.

We invite you to submit your comments below! Ingrid Daubechies, President, IMU

Barbara Lee Keyfitz, President, ICIAM BLOG on Mathematical Journals Posted on November 18, 2011

Keyfitz, Barbara Lee

Department of Mathematics, Ohio State University, USA * Earliest Indexed Publication: 1970

* Total Publications: 66 * Total Citations: 578

40/49 Johannes Huebschmann on December 10, 2011: professor

USTL, UFR de Mathmatiques, CNRS-UMR 8524, 59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex, France

Huebschmann, Johannes

* Earliest Indexed Publication: 1977 * Total Publications: 70

* Total Citations: 494

* Main areas: Global analysis, Group theory.

I am against mathematics journal ranking, for the reasons given by others. In particular I very much share the views of J. Ball and I. Ekeland.

In case the international mathematics community is really forced to pur- sue this issue, the only reasonable journal rating I can see would be

• journals meeting the standard

41/49 Jean-Paul Allouche on November 19, 2011 at 11:55 said:

Directeur de Recherche CNRS, Paris

Allouche, Jean-Paul

* Earliest Indexed Publication: 1977 * Total Publications: 129

* Total Citations: 779

* Main area: Number Theory

Though I fully understand the reasons for creating a homemade ranking, though I fully agree with the opinions about dangers and or stupidities of all other ways of ranking, I am *strongly* against creating any ranking. My reasons are the evident ones: no really serious ranking is possible, but also any ranking is *certainly* going to be misused at some point. An intense campaign of continuous lobbying by mathematicians showing the absurdity of *any* ranking seems to me largely better (after all mathematicians are probably *the* people who can prove that absurdity).

42/49 Stefan Samko on November 20, 2011 at 00:00 said:

Professor Jubilado, Universidade do Algarve

Samko, Stefan Grigorevich

* Earliest Indexed Publication: 1965 * Total Publications: 215

* Total Citations: 1860

* Main area: Real functions, Operator Theory In support of the attitude of the working group, all my experience, as well

as that of many my coauthors and colleagues shows that Impact Factor approach to the evaluation of our research in mathematics is dangerous indeed, because it allows for administrations, panels and so on to judge formally knowing nothing about the level of the resarch and its actuality.

43/49 Wolfgang Soergel on November 20, 2011 at 21:22 said:

Professor, Mathematisches Institut Albert-Ludwigs-Universit¨at Freiburg

Soergel, Wolfgang

* Earliest Indexed Publication: 1986 * Total Publications: 30

* Total Citations: 691

* Main area: Nonassociative rings and algebras

I am extremely sceptical about a rating of mathematical journals organized by the IMU/ICIAM.

I can see no reason why this scheme of assigning a number from 1 to 4 to each journal should be misused less than other already existing simplistic schemes like the impact factor. I rather think that efforts to argue against these kind of simplistic schemes would be greatly hampered by the fact mathematicians also organize such a rating by themselves.

44/49 Andrew Mathas on November 21, 2011 at 03:10 said:

Professor

School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, Australia

Mathas, Andrew

* Earliest Indexed Publication: 1994 * Total Publications: 38

* Total Citations: 632

* Main area: Group theory and generalizations I have trouble seeing any value in this exercise. As the report

from the working party states clearly, bibliometric data provides a poor proxy for measuring the quality of research or of a jour- nal.

Rather than attempting to create yet another imperfect index I think that the mathematical community would be better served if we put our efforts into overturning the current reliance by administrators and govern- ments on these superficial metrics.

The best outcome that the IMU/ICIAM can hope or in creating their own journal ranking system is that this system will be widely adopted to JUDGE the quality of mathematics papers. Is this really what we want?

I think that the message that all of us, including the IMU and ICIAM, should be pushing is how rank all of these ranking systems are.

45/49 J.R. Strooker on November 30, 2011 at 00:00 said:

Mathematisch Instituut, Universiteit Utrecht, Postbus 80010, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands

Strooker, Jan Rustom

* Earliest Indexed Publication: 1965 * Total Publications: 23

* Total Citations: 71

* Main area: Commutative rings and algebras

To me it seems a mistake to draft a proposal on how bib- liometric statistics should be used, rather than trying to con- vince authorities that such considerations should at most

marginally influence choices. Such choices should in prin-

ciple depend on the judgment of a mathematical peer group. Your proposal may lead to a kind of authorised procedure by which various burocracies will be only too pleased to proceed.

46/49 Ivar Ekeland on December 8, 2011 at 19:07 said:

Professor Emeritus, Paris-Dauphine and UBC

Ekeland, Ivar

* Earliest Indexed Publication: 1968 * Total Publications: 150

* Total Citations: 3094

* Main area: Global analysis, optimal control I am very strongly against introducing any official rating of mathematical

journals. The perverse effects of such a system is now apparent:

- The question of where to publish now is almost as important as what to publish.

47/49 Prof Milan Merkle on February 9, 2012 at 16:30 said:

There are Elsevier and Thomson-Reuters out there: where is Mathematics?

. . . Before the times when our academic positions started to depend on the number of articles that we had published in certain high rated jour- nals, we all knew which journals were good, although they had not been officially rated. How did we know that? You see a famous persons article there, you find interesting stuff, you find hard stuff, and you see that good mathematicians publish there. Thats it!

It was Thomson company that was promoting IF as a measure of quality of journals. Scientific bureaucracy in many countries liked the idea and adopted IF as a convenient unique measure of scientific achievements of people. Many scientists in those countries begun to strive for IF, as their professional life depended on it: the slogan publish or perish turned into IF or perish. To answer the emerging need for IFs, commercial publishers opened new possibilities to scientists from the third world and eeryone else : journals with high IF, offering their services to IF hunters.

While large and developed mathematical communities have various de- grees of success in resisting the IFomania, the consequences in emerging and undeveloped math communities are devastating.

If we define any quantitative measure of quality, then the market forces will work in the direction of raising this mea- sure in the cost of loosing the quality. Any attempt to re- place IF with some other number or an algorithm, would soon yield similar grave consequences, because there will always be some participants in the game that will find a common in- terest in misbehaving of some sort in order to increase their ratings by collecting points instead of doing good mathemat- ics.

48/49 Ingrid Daubechies on the IMU blog and journals

Department of Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA, President of the IMU

Daubechies, Ingrid Chantal

* Earliest Indexed Publication: 1977 * Total Publications: 109

* Total Citations: 4021

* Main area: Fourier analysis

The stated goal of this blog at its start was to collect opinions from the mathematical community about a proposal that the IMU and ICIAM start a committee that would produce a rating of mathematical research journals. It has fulfilled that goal; as reported in the July issue of the IMU- Net Newsletter, the IMU has decided not to go forward with the creation of such a committee.

Very soon after the opening of this blog, it became a forum where math- ematicians also formulated suggestions for possible IMU roles related to various other important issues concerning mathematical journals. The early discussion here led to several prominent members of our community articulating their frustration with the present situation of scholarly publishing in mathematics, and in par- ticular with pricing policies making it very hard for all but the most prominent and wealthy universities to keep up with the cost of subscriptions. This public discussion probably played a role in the later development of thecostofknowledge.com site, where, fol- lowing Tim Gowers’ lead, many of us very publicly and firmly stated our opposition to these pricing policies. The protest took the form of a boycott of one particular publisher, Elsevier, and was (as of Oct 16, 2012) signed by over 12,801 scientists (the policies we were protesting are not limited to mathematics), including 2,189 mathematicians.

49/49 But whatever happens, it is clear that great change can lead to great

upsets. Our whole community would benefit from orderly transitions for our journals to the new publication model(s). The best possible transition will happen if there is broad community support for the journals. With present pricing policies, publishing companies are undermining the possi- bility of a truly community-wide support. I personally know of several editorial boards of high profile journals where many members are torn: on the one hand, they agree with many of the issues raised by the statement of purpose at thecostofknowledge.com, on the other hand they don’t want to cause mayhem for the excellent journals to which they have devoted considerable amounts of energy and time, in service to their mathematical communities. I have also been asked for advice by young people who are offered positions on Editorial Boards, and are tempted by this recognition of their rising status in their community, but who resonate as well with the Statement of Purpose of thecostofknowledge.com .

Let me formulate here a very simple proposal that, if implemented, would not upset the identity of the existing journals, that would enable commer- cial publishing houses to continue to make a living while servicing the publication needs of the mathematical community, but that nevertheless would make a real difference to the mathematical community:

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