"Papers?"
In the office, when Tian Liangwei asked him about it, a rare hint of hesitation appeared on Xu Yun's face.
He fell silent for a moment, but in the end decided to be honest:
"Teacher, if I get the chance, I'd like to publish in a Q1 journal."
"Q1, huh?"
Tian Liangwei tapped his index finger against the desk. He didn't seem too surprised, and pondered for a moment before saying:
"Little Xu, you should know that Imidacloprid is a neonicotinoid insecticide with an established chemical name. Its patent just happened to expire in 2011.
"So if you want to publish a Q1 paper, the fourth generation definitely won't be enough. The fifth generation is the bare minimum. That's clear, right?"
Xu Yun nodded slightly to show he understood.
When people talked about papers, the two terms that probably came to most people's minds were SCI and Nature.
But in reality, they weren't concepts of the same kind.
Many people mistakenly thought SCI was short for the journal Science, but that was wrong!
SCI stood for Science Citation Index. It referred to a journal index operated by Clarivate, not a single journal.
If a journal was included in the index, it meant it met a certain standard of quality. You could check the website to see whether a journal was indexed.
Clarivate also used each journal's citation data from the previous two years to calculate a metric called the impact factor.
Take 1992 as an example. To calculate a journal's impact factor for that year:
X = The total number of citations in 1992 to papers the journal published in 1990 and 1991.
Y = The total number of papers the journal published in 1990 and 1991.
IF for 1992 = X (1990, 1991) / Y (1990, 1991).
Clarivate