Pacific Conservation Biology: an authorship and citation analysis

Abstract

We analysed Pacific Conservation Biology?s authorship and readership from 1993?2007 to quantify who publishes in the journal, who cites the journal, how the journal compares to other conservation journals and whether there are trends in authorship and useage over time. Authors came from Australia (73%, represented in 15 of 15 years), the Americas (Canada, USA and South American countries) (12%, represented in 13 of 15 years), New Zealand (8%, represented in 14 of 15 years), other Pacific and Asian countries (4%, represented in 11 of 15 years) and Europe (2%, represented in 11 of 15 years). Overall, 46% of authors were academics. Using the Scopus database in April 2008 and the cited reference feature in the ISI Web of Science in July 2008, =84% papers published each year between 1993 and 2001 were cited at least once in each database, declining to under 19% in 2007 because articles had far less time to accrue citations. Using the cited reference feature in the ISI Web of Science database in July 2008, authors citing Pacific Conservation Biology came from Australia and 82 other countries. Compared to 24 journals listed in Thomson Reuters? ?Biodiversity Conservation? category in 2008, Pacific Conservation Biology ranked between the 10th and 39th percentiles for a range of citation statistics derived from both Scopus and ISI Web of Science, including: Journal Impact Factor (JIF) for 2006, mean JIF for 2001?2006 and h-index, g-index, mean citations/paper and median citations/paper for 2000?2006. Overall, most authors are Australian, but with consistent international representation and academic and non-academic authors. With time, most papers are cited (including many international citations) and citation statistics are within the range of similar journals abstracted in ISI Web of Science. On the basis of the results, we offer suggestions for increasing Pacific Conservation Biology?s use and a critique of the growing tendency to accept citation-based bibliometric data as indicators of the quality or achievements of journals and individual scientists.