Impact of Colombian health journals: Comparing Publindex versus Google Scholar Metrics, SciELO and SCOPUS

The citation based indicators are recognized by the scientific community to assess the quality of scientific journals. Colombia has a rating system called the National Journal magazines Index (IBN)/Publindex. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the Colombian health journals according to Google ScholarMetrics (GSM), SciELO, and SCOPUS, compared with the IBN classification for 2007-2011. In analyzing journals by GSM H index, we find that among the worst journals classified "C" by Publindex, there are publications with higher H5 index and H5 median than those top-ranked journals by IBN as "B" and "A2". There are journals such as The Colombian Anesthesiology that without being in IBN, has SciELO higher impact factor than several IBN A1 journals. There are indexed journals in Scopus which despite being quartile 3 (Q3) are rated "A2" by IBN but they are Q4 journals classified as "A1" by IBN. This shows that Publindex classification is not consistent with journal impact indicators in three systems: GSM, Scopus, and SciELO, as it has been previously suggested by other authors. It is required to improve the Publindex classification and such classification should take into account citation and impact parameters so that the quality reflected in international indicators would be consistent with the national classification.