Hi David, 

At Loughborough we would use the SNIP or SJR for journal citedness indicators. 

To go back to your original question though, I think Charles is right when he says that the growth in a journal's citedness over time could be said to be down to editorial activity. However I'm wondering whether staking a claim in the citedness of a special issue you edited might be pushing it? I'm guessing if a special issue is abnormally highly cited it would probably be down to the currency of the topic, or the quality of the contributors you managed to persuade to write for it. Could either be said to be due to the academic prowess of the guest editor?? It might also be interesting to investigate the citedness of special issues generally? I would hypothesise that the clustering together of papers on a theme would have a positive citation effect on them all due to improved visibility and discovery (you find one paper, you find them all)? 

Hope this helps?

Elizabeth 

Sent from my iPhone

> On 30 Sep 2016, at 15:03, David.Jenkins <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Charles,
> 
> Thanks for the response!
> 
> Would people advocate using a different metric (e.g SNIP) over time as a replacement then?
> 
> David.
> 
> David Jenkins
> Research Support Librarian
> Library Services, The Open University
> 01908 653435 [log in to unmask]  | @d_r_jenkins | www.open.ac.uk/library
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: A bibliometrics discussion list for the Library and Research Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of CHARLES OPPENHEIM
> Sent: 29 September 2016 09:48
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Editor-level metrics?
> 
> Changes in Journal Impact Factor over the time the person has been editor is an obvious tool, but one that I would not recommend because of the known flaws in its use
> 
> Charles
> 
> Professor Charles Oppenheim
> ----Original message----
> From : [log in to unmask]
> Date : 29/09/2016 - 09:33 (BST)
> To : [log in to unmask]
> Subject : Editor-level metrics?
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Please can I ask if anyone is aware of any editor-level metrics?
> 
> We have a researcher who is keen to demonstrate the impact of his editorship of special issues of journals quantitatively. He would like to do this in relation to his submissions for the next REF.
> 
> I am unaware of any metrics that cover this kind of ground and plan to respond as follows:
> 
> - firstly, we are not 100% sure what metrics will be required in the next REF
> - as things stand, we would have to look at the metrics for articles that appear in special issues he has edited (and possible journal level metrics too) in order to get some idea of the impact of his editorship, as far as it can be measured quantatively
> - he may want to consider demonstrating the impact of his editorship in a more qualitative way
> 
> I also imagine creating editor-level metrics would be problematic, although perhaps no more problematic than the design of journal or article level metrics. For instance, I wondered:
> 
> - whether it would add fuel to the view that metrics can skew research because it would further incentivise editors to publish articles that get high metrics rather than those that have 'academic value' per se?
> - how we would avoid the Journal Impact Factor affect i.e. unfairly spreading the value of few highly cited articles across an editor?
> - whether editor-level metrics should be apportioned according to the level of contribution an individual had towards editing an issue, in cases where there are multiple editors (although I am not aware of an article level system that attempts to do the same for authors)?
> - whether some authors may feel that editors were effectively taking credit for material they have written?
> 
> Any thoughts would be welcome.
> 
> Thanks for your help!
> 
> 
> 
> David.
> 
> David Jenkins
> Research Support Librarian
> Library Services, The Open University
> -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302). The Open University is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.