Article translated from Periódico Educación
More and more people from different countries are privately asking me on social media whether the speaker leading a training session or the X user they follow as a reference are reliable. I always try to encourage them to learn how to research this for themselves. Let’s suppose the speaker is discussing the usefulness (or lack thereof) of basing teaching on each individual’s learning styles. They cite, as a reference on this topic, the article “The Enduring Appeal of ‘Learning Styles’” by an author named Scott. We need to determine to what extent this article has been scientifically validated or not:
Minute 1:
- We type the title of the article in quotes into Google.
- Then, we click on the entry with that title that includes the URL: https://journals.sagepub.com
3. We check the Impact Factor of the journal (at the top), which is 2.415. This is an indicator of how often researchers cite articles from this journal in their own work within a specific year.
In one minute, we’ve already determined that the journal is scientifically validated, that researchers read its articles, and that some consider them important enough to cite. If we want to spend another minute, we can find out to what extent it is validated.
Minute 2:
4. We click on the Impact Factor to see whether it is high or low within the journal’s field, and we check the three most validated rankings: Journal Citation Reports, Scopus, and Google Scholar.
5. Each of these three rankings has its own method for calculating impact. From these, if we click on one of them—Journal Citation Reports, for example—we see that this is the ranking the journal has chosen to display its Impact Factor: 2.415.
6. We also see it states 137 out of 267, meaning there are 267 journals indexed in that field. With a rank of 137, it narrowly misses the second quartile (Q2) and falls into the third quartile (Q3). While being in Q1 would be better, being in Q3 still indicates the journal is scientifically validated. To use an analogy, it’s like graduating from a teaching degree with a passing grade, perhaps a solid “C” rather than an “A.” This is still a respectable outcome, especially considering that many speakers present ideas while concealing the fact that their work has received no scientific validation. Using the same analogy, they haven’t even passed the coursework for the teaching degree and don’t hold the qualification.
Minute 3:
In the second minute, we’ve managed to determine the scientific validation of the journal, but not of the article itself. The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was a non-profit initiative by scientists aimed at challenging the business and control of traditional journal publishers, which charge for access and therefore are not freely available to the public. PLOS, as an active advocate for open science, introduced the very insightful idea of considering the impact of the article rather than the journal, as these can differ significantly. The Altmetrics system would require another article to explain in detail, but for now, we will focus solely on this specific point.
7. We go back and click on “Metrics and citations,” seeing that it has 47 citations in Web of Science. This means that since it was published in 2010, it has been cited 47 times by researchers in their own scientific articles.
Many diverse people have thanked me for these instructions. With this article, I hope to make these guidelines public and thus contribute to the communication of science, which everyone has the right to access and is so crucial for ensuring that efforts, such as those of educators, lead to improvements in outcomes. Of course, these are just initial instructions that will need further refinement, but if this first part is understood, it will be very useful in helping to avoid deception. Criticisms will be welcome, as they will help clarify what is difficult to explain in such a limited space. However, most of the criticisms being made about scientific journals are not true, as I have clarified in a previous article, which I recommend reading and referencing to argue against the tsunami of pseudoscience that is trying to overwhelm us.
(Image: Pixabay)
Emeritus Full-Professor at the University of Barcelona. Number 1 researcher in Google Scholar Scientific ranking in the categories of "Gender Violence" and "Social Impact". Director of REVERS-ED.