Author: Ignacio Aguaded – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
The second beta version of a new product has been published a few days ago (May 2019), which is aimed at clarifying the panorama of the instruments to assess the prestige, visibility and impact of scientific journals in Spanish. Last year the product was tested by publishing a first version with the magazines of Education, generating its impact factor for 2016 and 2017.
This year DIALNET MÉTRICAS is definitively consolidated, expanding to three new areas, apart from the already analyzed Education: Communication, Documentation and Sports, already extending its analysis to the impact factors of 2016-2018, publishing even this year this new index before the recognized international indexers: WoS (JCR) and Scopus (CiteScore and SJR). Precisely of these two products, known and valued worldwide, Dialnet Métricas is going to be its complement because, without colliding with them, it offers a product based on the impact of publications with the complementarity of analyzing Spanish literature, based on the great portal that is, without doubt, Dialnet, at the level of Spanish as a science in the world and second scientific language after English.
Already discarded, outdated and outdated, DICE, RESH, INRECs, even other quality products with the EC3-UGR brand, but not periodically updated, Dialnet Métricas will become the benchmark for the measurement of scientific journals in Spanish by several reasons:
1) Be a producer created and supported by Dialnet, the largest portal of scientific literature in Spanish (theses, congresses and scientific journals). Until now, this portal lacked an internal scientific meter and updated scientific literature to guide researchers.
2) The Dialnet Metricas product was endorsed and advised by research groups of the UCM and UGR (EC3) that are referents in Spain in the evaluation of science, with previous products that support their career in the field.
3) Use a simple and transparent evaluation system based on citations (cited and cited journals, cited and citing authors, network of journals) with a wide range of five years (compared to the two of WoS and the three of Scopus) that allow have a much more complete vision of the consolidation of the publication in Social Sciences.
4) Offer parallel information from Universities, Departments, Researchers (on a personal basis), classified by their Knowledge Areas, generating the, as much as they are feared as desired, rankings that, like it or not, put each researcher in their place measuring its productivity, but also its impact on the community. In short, objective indicators of transparency, and obviously their relative limitations.
Undoubtedly, when Dialnet Metricas is generalized to all disciplines, we can count on an internationally approved product in our country and in Latin America to evaluate Hispanic science with parameters recognized by the scientific community. But it will be, without a doubt, when the Evaluation Agencies take it into account in their processes of accreditation, valuation of degrees and universities and professional promotion, when their academic validity will be guaranteed.
In the recently published indexes valid for 2019/2020, with the impact factors 2016, 2017 and 2018 (http://bit.ly/2VZdHVT), the journal COMUNICAR appears classified in both Education (http://bit.ly / 2W1p53r), as in Communication (http://bit.ly/2EI9OKr), on both bases, as the first of all the journals analyzed, on 223 and 51 journals respectively, with an impact factor in 2018 of 3,275.
