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Editorial
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Measurements come in all shapes and sizes. Each June, editors of journals wait nervously for news of their Impact Factor—derived as citations in Year 3 of a journal's contents in Years 1 and 2 of the cycle, divided by the number of eligible items published over that biennial period. We treat a rise in Impact Factor with triumphalism; and a fall from grace as the inevitable oscillations of short-termism. Perhaps more revealing of the extent to which the contents of a journal are deemed readable and useful (and therefore cited) is Thomson Reuter's Essential Science Indicators database, covering the period January 1998–December 2008, which surveys original papers and reviews assigned on the basis of a journal-to-category field-definition system and, in reporting citations per paper, reflecting impact over the long term. Times Higher Education has extracted the top 10 journals in neuroscience and behaviour from 282 considered, of which 29 received
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