The change from French to English and its effect upon the impact factor and ranking of the Pasteur journals

Abstract

Objective: to determine the effect that the change from French to English had on the impact of the Annales de l’Institut Pasteur .

Theoretical reference: the Pasteur Institute journals have a prestige of over 100 years of existence and eight Nobel Prize winners in physiology and medicine. Changes through time on the impact of these journals can be monitored, as they are included in databases of the Institute for Scientific Information.

Method: a year-by-year analysis from 1974 to 1992 was effected, using simple regression between percentage of articles published in English and (i) their impact factor and (ii) their ranking among journals of the same field.

Results: the overall determination coefficient between the percentage in English and the impact factor was 0.108. By series, the coefficient factor between percentage in English and the journal’s rank among similar publications was 0.178 for Annales de Microbiologie , 0.045 for Annales d’Immunologie and 0.122 for Annales de Virologie .

Conclusions: the change of language did not increase the impact factor of the French journals nor improve their ranking among publications of the same discipline.

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