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It's not a great journal. Per the metrics: 0.882 - Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 0.37 - SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 4 - Cite Score This is a place
by timr 5y ago
It's not a great journal. Per the metrics:
0.882 - Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP)
0.37 - SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
4 - Cite Score
This is a place where niche papers get published. Springer runs tons of crap journals.
(for reference, SJR scores for all journals: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php)
- spekcular 5y agoLow citation count does not imply it's an untrustworthy journal. Sometimes niche knowledge is useful – as in the present case of food contamination studies!
- timr 5y agoNo, but it implies they have a low bar for acceptance. You can't take impact factor of the journal as the sole indicator of quality for a particular paper (even NEJM publishes garbage), but it should strongly influence your prior. Especially for general-interest studies like this, if the results were impactful and well done they'd be published in a better journal. Assuming that this is done well (I have no idea), the fact that it's in a super-niche journal means that it's likely not surprising/interesting to anyone in the field.
- spekcular 5y agoLet's not conflate "quality" of the paper with whether the results are surprising or interesting to experts. As far as I tell, the work is competently done and provides useful information to consumers. Namely, that commercially available ceramic mugs likely do not pose a lead hazard, with quantitative estimates of the lead they leach. It's not going to win a Nobel prize – but I don't think that should be the bar for taking food safety research seriously.
- timr 5y agoI'm not conflating the two. I said explicitly I don't have any basis to judge.