Scientific journals have played an essential role in the diffusion of research breakthroughs. For many years there was no competition between journals, but, in recent decades they have become categorized by a careful assessment of their published contents based on several metric parameters. Of greater note, the ‘prestige index’ has become an essential tool used by public and private institutions to develop their scientific policy. Thus, the evaluation of research staffs, the concession of grants or fellowships and even the scholarly reputation and academic positions are mainly founded on a given journal's ‘quality’. As a consequence, the prestige of some journals has gone up, based on the assumption that they publish cutting-edge science, while the reputation of others has gone down. Within the field of Microbiology, we have carried out a direct analysis by monitoring several representative classic journals according to customary metric parameters over 20 years. This analysis also covers another set of journals of recent appearance (novel journals). Although a direct comparison between both groups is not possible, this approach serves to perceive the trends of publication among microbiologists. Our preliminary conclusion is that the continued existence of many so-termed classic journals devoted to Microbiology is seriously threatened.

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微生物学出版物趋势：经典科学期刊是否被定为灭绝？

科学期刊在研究突破的传播中起着至关重要的作用。多年来，期刊之间没有竞争，但是在最近的几十年中，通过根据几个度量参数对出版内容进行仔细评估，对期刊进行了分类。更值得一提的是，“信誉指数”已成为公共和私人机构制定科学政策所必需的工具。因此，研究人员的评估，赠款或研究金的特许权乃至学术声誉和学术职位的评估主要基于给定期刊的“质量”。结果，某些期刊的威望根据其出版尖端科学的假设而上升，而其他期刊的声誉则下降。在微生物学领域，根据20年来惯用的度量标准参数的经典期刊。该分析还涵盖了另一组近期出现的期刊（新颖期刊）。尽管不可能在两组之间进行直接比较，但是这种方法有助于感知微生物学家的出版趋势。我们的初步结论是，许多致力于微生物学的所谓经典期刊的继续存在受到严重威胁。