Metrics that Credit All Contributions

TOP Factor

TOP Factor is an assessment of a scientific journal’s policies based on the framework provided by the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines. TOP Factor is a more ideal means to evaluate journal quality because it is based on practices that are fundamental to the conduct of science.

I'm Interested

Mature

| Updated: 21 May 2024

Organization:

Center of Open Science

Home page | Project page

Keywords:
Best Practices, Incentives, Peer Review, Policy

Project Goals

Currently, journal reputation stems from metrics that rely on citation & impact. This distorts the process of science. Reducing the reliance of impact factors on journal reputation requires a credible alternative assessment that is based on the scientific ideals of transparency and rigor. The goals of TOP Factor are to base journal reputation on scientific ideals, and to increase the prevalence of open practices such as data sharing, preregistration, and replication studies.

Deliverables

TOP Factor provides a numerical assessment of journal policies that can be compared to other journals within a discipline. This comparison may incentivize policy improvement by providing examples for peer journals to emulate. Better policies lead to better, more transparent and reproducible scientific research.

What's Needed

TOP Factor requires additional input for submitting journal assessments and additional community effort to share these assessments with decision makers or policy makers at journals and publishers so that they can be aware of opportunities for improvement.

Links

New Measure Rates Quality of Research Journals’ Policies to Promote Transparency and Reproducibility.