The database from which to extract information is the Web of Knowledge, to which we have access through the Ministry of Science and Innovation. The use of this database as opposed to another is due to the fact that it is used for bibliometric assessments by public bodies.

Statistics deduced from scientific literature. Their use is based on the important role of publications in the dissemination of new knowledge, a role played at all levels of the scientific process.

The analysis of citations that a publication receives from other subsequent publications or from references a publication makes to previous ones is one of the most used indicators in Bibliometrics. Citation analysis is often performed to measure the repercussions or impact of a journal or an author. In the beginning, the analysis of citations received for work involved the ‘quality’ of the document. This is now in question from the point of view of sociology of Science, because although citing may represent recognition of the professional value, there is a series of social, political and economic factors that distort and subjectivise these indices. Obtaining impact indicators through journals led Eugene Garfield in 1972 to create the Science Citation Abstracts, a repertoire that has been used internationally as a benchmark of the impact and dissemination of scientific literature. At present we obtain the data on citations received by authors or works from the Web of Science, databases that we access through the Web of Knowledge.

The impact factor is a bibliometric index that was described by Eugene Garfield in the ‘60s and is currently published through Journal Citation Reports (JCR), a database available through the US Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The Impact Factor of a journal in a given year is calculated by adding citations which that journal has received in the given year of articles published in the previous two years and dividing the number of citations by the total number of articles published in those two years.

Example: the Impact Factor of a journal in 2011 is calculated by adding all the citations the journal receives in 2011 to articles published in 2009 and 2008 and dividing it by the total number of papers published in 2009 and 2008.

All journals contained in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are pigeonholed into one or several subjects. The Impact Factor data of a publication is always subjective data and is always subject to different citation habits within each subject. Thus it is wrong to make comparisons of Impact Factor figures in publications belonging to different subjects. To do this type of equating sorting into quartiles or deciles is used. With this indicator we can compare journals in different categories without considering the difference in the Impact Factor figures. The quartiles are the values that divide the set of journals arranged in four (or ten in the case of deciles) equal percentage parts. This indicator is obtained by dividing the total number of journals in a field of four (ten if you are finding the deciles). This would obtain the number of journals within each quartile (or decile). Once we have that data we put all the journals of the same subject in descending order according to their Impact Factor and we know that journals belonging to the first quartile (or decile) would be the first to correspond with the number that we obtained previously.

Example: A Journal Citation Report category N is composed of 104 journals. When making the division by quartile we see that each quartile has 26 journals. Sorting the 104 journals by Impact Factor in descending order the top quartile would be the 26 journals with higher Impact Factor figures.

Currently, the quartile data is accessible through the Journal Citation Report (JCR).

Previously, search strategies were prepared for each research group, consisting of putting together the names of each and every one of the members of a group in a single search. In this way, once we activate that search it will return all documents in the database that are signed by one of the researchers from the same group. Once we have the results exported from the database, we turn them into a spreadsheet that will allow us to find the corresponding indicators. This same procedure will be done for each of the groups comprising IdiPAZ. Once we have all the documents from all the groups, a new spreadsheet is created including all of these documents except those repeated in order to also find the IdiPAZ general indicators. Once both the general results and those for each group are ready they are recorded in a report which will then be made available to all researchers through the website.

The frequency of the reports is quarterly and the information contained therein is cumulative. This means that the first report to be published in April will include information from the first three months, in the second report published in July the information will be for the first six months, in the third report to be published in October the information will correspond to nine months of the year and finally the report to be published in January next year will show the information for the entire preceding year. The information to be included within these reports will be unofficial, with the final data appearing on the Research Report each year.

Being the official IdiPAZ website the objective is that all information posted on it is accurate and verifiable. Therefore updates on the research results will be made after publication of the official document that summarises the IdiPAZ research, the Research Report.