Special volume on Paleontology at the AABC

The centenary of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) was a date much commemorated by scientists and institutions in Brazil. To celebrate this important occasion, some special issues were announced by the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (AABC) and published in subsequent years (e.g., Crespilho 2018, Kellner 2019). Among these, Kellner & Soares (2019) organized a special issue (AABC 91 Suppl. 2) focusing primarily on contributions concerning the study of fossils, published under Earth Sciences. This field was latter subdivided into Paleontology and Geosciences (Kellner 2021).

In order to get a general idea of how papers published by the AABC are contributing to the Impact Factor (IF) of this journal, I have carried out brief surveys on some specific areas (e.g., Kellner 2020a, b, c, d). Here I will make a brief assessment on how the papers of AABC 91 Suppl. 2 have impacted the AABC IF-2020 (1,753) and AABC IF-2021 (1,811). This issue consists of 20 articles (Kellner & Soares 2019), of which 18 would be currently classified in the Paleontology section of the AABC and these will be the ones addressed here. As has been shown before, there are divergences in the number of articles and citations presented by the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) compared to the Web of Science (WoS) page (e.g., Kellner 2020a, d). I will use the data presented by JCR, as apparently these are the values considered and used for the IF calculation. I obtained the data using the Journal Citations Reports (2022) that was recently made available, using the respective filters for the years 2020 and 2021.

In 2020 and 2021, all 18 papers published in Paleontology published in the special issue considered here (AABC 91 Suppl. 2-Paleo) were found by JCR, resulting in a Missing Article Index (MAI, see Kellner 2020b) of zero. As has been pointed out before, one way to have a general idea on how selection of articles could influence the IF of a journal is the Article Citation Factor (ACF), a simple ratio between cited articles in relation to the number of published articles in a particular issue or timespan (Kellner 2020a). This can be expanded into minimum number of citations of one, two, three and so on, taking into account the number of citations that may or may not influence positively a journal´s IF. If the Impact Factor of a Journal is three, for example, all articles that have lesser citations tend not to not positively influence the IF of that journal.

Regarding AABC 91 Suppl. 2-Paleo, of the 18 articles published, five were not cited in 2020, resulting in an ACF12019/2020 of 0.7222, and 10 received less than two citations, resulting in an ACF22019/2020 of 0.4444 (Table I). In 2021, only one article was not cited (ACF12019/2021 - 0.9444) and five received two or fewer citations (ACF22019/2021 - 0.7222). Compared to previous analyses using this parameter, AABC 91 Suppl. 2-Paleo clearly stands out positively from other issues (or scientific fields) addressed previously (Kellner 2020b, c, d).

Table I
Citations and indexes concerning the articles on Paleontology published in the issue 91 Supplement 2 by the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences that have been considered in the Impact Factor of 2020 and 2021.

Art Pub 2019	18
Cit Art12019/2020	13
Cit Art22019/2020	08
Cit Art12019/2021	17
Cit Art22019/2021	13
Cit 2019/2020	32
Cit 2019/2021	77
Cit MCAr 2019-2020	06-05-03
Cit MCAr 2019-2021	16-12-10
ACF12019/2020	0.7222
ACF22019/2020	0.4444
ACF12019/2021	0.9444
ACF22019/2021	0.7222
91 Suppl. 2 IF-2020	1.778
RAIF12019/2020	2.462
RAIF22019/2020	3.375
91 Suppl. 2 IF-2021	4.278
RAIF12019/2021	4.529
RAIF22019/2021	5.615

• Abbreviations: Art Pub 2019 – number of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2, ACF12019/2020 – Article Citation Factor of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least once in 2020, ACF22019/2020 – Article Citation Factor of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least twice in 2020, ACF12019/2021 – Article Citation Factor of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least once in 2021, ACF22019/2021 – Article Citation Factor of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least twice in 2021, Cit 2019/2020- number of citations in 2020 of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2, Cit 2019/2021- number of citations in 2021 of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2, Cit Art12019/2020 – number of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least once in 2020, Cit Art22019/2020 – number of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least twice in 2020, Cit Art12019/2021 – number of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least once in 2021, Cit Art22019/2021 – number of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least twice in 2021, Cit MCAr 2019/2020 – number of citations in 2020 of the three most cited articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2, Cit MCAr 2019/2021 – number of citations in 2021 of the three most cited articles articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2, RAIF12019/2020 – Reescalated Article Impact Factor of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited in 2020, RAIF22019/2020 – Reescalated Article Impact Factor of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least twice in 2020, RAIF12019/2021 – Reescalated Article Impact Factor of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited in 2021, RAIF22019/2021 – Reescalated Article Impact Factor of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2 cited at least twice in 2021, 91 Suppl. 2 IF 2020 – Impact Factor of 2020 of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2, 91 Suppl. 2 IF 2021 – Impact Factor of 2021 of articles on Paleontology published in AABC 91 Supplement 2.

If only AABC 91 Suppl. 2-Paleo is considered, the AABC 91 Suppl. 2 IF-2020 would be 1.778, which is basically the same of the AABC IF-2020 (1,753), but the AABC 91 Suppl. 2 IF-2022 (4.278) is more than the double that of the AABC IF-2021 (1,811). The Reescalated Article Impact Factor (RAIF, Kellner 2020a) for articles published in AABC 91 Suppl.2-Paleo cited at least once in 2020 (RAIF12019/2020) and 2021 (RAIF12019/2020) is 2.462 and 4.529, respectively. Here it can be concluded that the selection of papers in paleontology definitively contributed to the bibliometric indexes of the AABC. Regarding papers cited at least two times in 2020 and 2021 (RAIF22019/2020 and RAIF22019/2021) RAIF is 4.529 and 5.615, respectively. This confirms that, judging by the number of citations, papers of impact have been published by the AABC in this field. The different values from 2020 and 2021 also indicate that it takes some time for articles to be absorbed by the scientific community in this area of study. This is also reflected by the three most cited articles in 2020 and 2021 (Table I).

This brief analysis shows that at least concerning this issue (AABC 91 Suppl. 2), the articles in the field of Paleontology have contributed substantially to the AABC IF-2020 and AABC IF-2021 and that a more careful selection of articles has the potential to improve the bibliometric indexes of this journal, an obvious conclusion.

REFERENCES

• CRESPILHO F. 2018. Commemorative Volume on the Centenary of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences: “Brazil: Frontiers of Chemical Sciences”. An Acad Bras Cienc 90: 591-592. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765201890S1.
• JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS. 2022. Journal Citation Reports Science Edition 2021, Clarivate Analytics. https://jcr-clarivate.ez29.periodicos.capes.gov.br/jcr-jp/journal-profile?journal=AN%20ACAD%20BRAS%20CIENC&year=2021&fromPage=%2Fjcr%2Fhome. Accessed on October 5, 2022.
  » https://jcr-clarivate.ez29.periodicos.capes.gov.br/jcr-jp/journal-profile?journal=AN%20ACAD%20BRAS%20CIENC&year=2021&fromPage=%2Fjcr%2Fhome
• KELLNER AWA. 2019. Special Volume of the Affiliated Members of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. An Acad Bras Cienc 91: e20191088. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765201920191088.
• KELLNER AWA. 2020a. Development of Agrarian Sciences at the AABC with comments on impact and performance evaluations. An Acad Bras Cienc 92: e202092S1. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202092S1.
• KELLNER AWA. 2020b. Development of Biological Sciences at the AABC. An Acad Bras Cienc 92: e202092S2. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202092S2.
• KELLNER AWA. 2020c. Impact and performances of different scientific fields at the AABC. An Acad Bras Cienc 92: e2020923. DOI 10.1590/0001-37652020923.
• KELLNER AWA. 2020d. A brief summary of the impact and performance of different scientific fields at the AABC. An Acad Bras Cienc 92: e2020924. DOI 10.1590/0001-37652020924.
• KELLNER AWA. 2021. New scientific fields in the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. An Acad Bras Cienc 93: e202193s3. DOI 10.1590/0001-37652021202193s3.
• KELLNER AWA & SOARES MB. 2019. Collection of Paleontology Papers in honor of the Centenary of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. An Acad Bras Cienc 91: e20191434. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765201920191434.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Dec 2022
• Date of issue
  2022