The Annals measures up…

Although much-derided, publication metrics – such as journal Impact Factors – seem to rule career advancement and progress in academia world-wide. The plant sciences are no exception with regard to this over-hyped, inappropriately used, arbitrary method of assessment. Well, we would say that if we were doing badly as a result of this system. However, a reason to be cheerful is that the Annals of Botany is amongst the ten ‘Top publications’ in botany/plant science (and one of only two with botany in its title!). This list – produced by Google Scholar Metrics – provides an ‘easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications’, and uses so-called ‘h’ metrics. Publications are ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics, and are searchable – for example, to see which articles in a publication were cited the most and who cited them. Now, although the dates and citation counts used are estimated(!), they are determined automatically by a computer program, and must therefore be independent, objective and believable. So, good news for the journal (yay!), and – maybe more importantly(?) – for those who publish in it!