The assessment combined article counts, citation data, an analysis of the journal’s open-access funding model and regression-based projections of established bibliometric metrics. Article-number data came principally from Web of Science, with Scopus used where journals or years were not covered, and 2023 figures taken from journal websites because database coverage was incomplete. Citation data were extracted from Scopus on 23 December 2023, so recent papers and citations may have been missed.

Vegetation Classification and Survey published 25 articles in its fourth volume, matching its previous high in 2021. Because the papers were longer than those in the first three years, the volume reached 360 pages, 16% above the previous maximum. Across its four years of publication, the journal showed a positive but non-significant trend in article numbers.

The 30-journal comparison showed different publication trends before and after 2020. Combined annual article growth was 12.0% up to 2020 and 3.2% from 2020 onward. Diversity and Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution grew by 50.5% annually before 2020 and 34.8% afterward, whereas the other 28 journals grew by 9.8% before 2020 and contracted by 3.9% afterward. After 2020, only Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, Vegetation Classification and Survey and Nature Ecology & Evolution had small positive trends among those 28 titles.

To compare citation performance, the editors divided each journal’s citation rate for articles from a given publication year by the average citation rate for all articles from the 30 journals in that year. A normalized rate of 1 therefore represented the comparison-group average. Across the journals, the average article accumulated 0.89 citations in its publication year, 3.33 in the following year, 4.79 in the second year and 6.03 in the third year.

Vegetation Classification and Survey’s normalized citation rate was approximately 0.21 for 2020 papers and 0.19 for 2021 papers, placing the journal 28th among the 30 titles in both years. It increased to 0.34 for 2022 papers, ranking 26th, and reached 0.86 for 2023 papers, ranking 14th. The 2023 value matched Alpine Botany, exceeded Biodiversity and Conservation at 0.75, and was above the Journal of Vegetation Science at 0.73 and Applied Vegetation Science at 0.47. The journal had the strongest positive annual trend in normalized citation rates in the comparison, at 0.18.

That improvement was sensitive to individual papers because the journal publishes relatively few articles annually. The 2023 paper introducing Ecological Indicator Values for Europe had received eight citations by December 2023. Excluding it would have reduced the normalized rate for VCS’s 2023 papers from 0.86 to 0.45. Among 95 articles published by December 2023, 12 had Scopus Field-Weighted Citation Impact above 1 relative to their assigned subject fields; all three papers in the journal’s “VCS Methods” category were among them.

The editors used regressions across 28 Web of Science-indexed journals to estimate future metrics. CiteScore was predicted from the normalized citation rate two years earlier with an R-squared of 0.922, while Journal Impact Factor was predicted from CiteScore with an R-squared of 0.968. Applying those models, the authors projected a CiteScore of 3.2 for 2024 and 7.5 for 2025, and, conditional on inclusion in Web of Science, Journal Impact Factors of 1.6 and 4.3. These are model-based forecasts subject to regression error and to assumptions that the relationships remain stable over time.

The journal’s financial model also faces constraints associated with gold open access, under which accepted authors pay article processing charges while readers receive free access. The International Association for Vegetation Science initially waived charges for its members, and in 2023 payments from some authors allowed free publication for other members with less association support. From 2024, obligatory but low charges applied to members from high-income countries, while the editors targeted financial self-sustainability by 2025. These developments accompanied the journal’s growing publication volume and improving citation metrics, but they did not eliminate the equity and sustainability problems the editors associated with author-funded open access.

Subject of Research: Bibliometric assessment of publication output, citation performance and open-access funding at a vegetation science journal

Article Title: Vegetation Classification and Survey is performing well

Article References: Dengler, J., Biurrun, I., Jansen, F., & Willner, W. (2024). Vegetation Classification and Survey is performing well. Vegetation Classification and Survey, 5, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.3897/vcs.118454

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/VCS.118454

Keywords: Vegetation Classification and Survey, bibliometrics, citation rates, CiteScore, Journal Impact Factor, open access, article processing charges, ecological journals, vegetation science, publishing, Vegetation, Classification