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Journal History and Impact Revisited

Gohar Feroz Khan1 and Han Woo Park2

It has been more than 11 years since The Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia (ISSN 1684- 629) was first launched in the year 2001. Since its launch, the Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia (JCEA) has gone through several changes and developments, including a recent change in ownership. Now the JCEA is primary published by the Cyber Emotions Research Institute at YeungNam University, South Korea. In order to widen the journal’s scope and readership, the Asia Triple Helix Society was also engaged as co-publisher. In this article, we detail these developments; particularly we will discus the journal’s history, current status, and impact factor.

History and Current Status

The journal was founded in 2001 by the Austrian Association of East Asian Studies in cooperation with leading scholars from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Initially, the journal was published under the name of eastasia.at. However, it was later renamed the Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia. In 2010, the Cyber Emotions Research Institute at YeungNam University, Korea, became a co-publisher of the journal.

In 2012, the Austrian Association of East Asian Studies had to suspend its operation as a consequence of the ongoing financial crisis in Europe and the subsequent lack of financial support from European donors. In June of the same year, The Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia was transferred to the Cyber Emotions Research Institute at YeungNam University, Korea, and the Asia Triple Helix Society under the editorship of Professor Christian Schafferer, Department of International Trade, Overseas Chinese University, Taiwan and Professor Han Woo Park from the Department of Media, Communication, & Information, YeungNam University, Korea. The journal also benefits from a diverse editorial board team of well-known scholars from all around the world.

Scope

Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia is a refereed biannual publication originally devoted to the study of current political, social and economic trends in China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia. Recently, after the journal’s move to the Cyber Emotions Research Institute at YeungNam University, Korea, and the Asia Triple Helix Society, the scope of the journal has been extended. The journal now also accepts studies related to Internet Research, Triple Helix, Social Network Analysis, and Cyber Communication in South East Asia. The editors welcome manuscripts based on original research or significant re-examination of existing literature.

The editorial team would like to take this transition opportunity to enhance diversity. One step in this direction is to expand the journal's focus in order to accommodate new forms of datadriven and interactive e-research in humanities and social sciences in a wider East Asian region. Next, there are insufficient international journals on East Asian affairs. Therefore junior researchers studying the East Asia region have been in a marginal position. This factor ultimately results in a "North-South divide" in the global political economy of scholarship. We do our best to publish innovative and coherent articles written by young and promising researchers if they make the JCEA more interesting and relevant to readers.

Impact Factor

It is hard to get an impact factor from organizations such as the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) for a start-up journal like Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia. However, there has been a new development in gauging a journals influence which makes it easy for a start-up journal to estimate its impact factor. For example, recently, Google started its “Google Scholar Citations” service for authors to measure their impact factor. Even though the system is basically intended for authors to measure their impact factor and has some shortcomings (Emilio & Álvaro, 2012), its flexibility enabled us to make a profile for the journal.

The “Google Scholar Citations” service shows that the Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia has received a total of 26 citations with an h factor of 2 (i.e. 2 of its 24 articles have been cited at least eight times). Also, all of the citations that lead to this h factor happened within the last five years. Google Scholar Citations further provides an i10 metric of 1 for the journal (i.e. 1 of its 24 articles have been cited at least ten times). Also, we analysed Scopus citations for the journal. Overall, the Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia has received a total of 14 citations: 3 citations each in 2009, 2010, and 2011; 1 citation in 2009, and 4 citations in 2012. The citations were received from well-known journals, such as, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Korea Observer, Issues and Studies, and International Sociology, to name a few. Now let’s calculate the impact factor for JCEA. We calculated the five year impact factor, because a five year impact factor is a more reliable way to reflect journal’s impact over a long period. For example, according to Thomson Reuters (2011):

The 5-year journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the five previous years.

Using Google Scholar, the 5-year journal impact (2008 to 2012) is 27 /24 = 1.12 for 2012. And if we calculate only with the citation that appeared in the Scopus database, the journal impact is 14/24= 0.58 for 2012. Please note the impact calculated here might be much higher as the citations for articles published in 2011-2012 are not yet known and could not be included in the present analysis.