Alternative metrics to measure journal impacts: entering in a “free market” era.

This article focuses on a study which examined the impact of aquatic scientific journals using alternative metrics. Three different databases were used to compare the positions of "Hydrobiologia" and other relevant journals in freshwater and marine sciences. 85 journals on aquatic ecology were chosen for this study. Results of the study showed that the performance of "Hydrobiologia" was constant among these databases and was one of the 41% most important journals in the Thomson ISI and among the 44% at the Eigenfactor.org databases. The impact factor of "Hydrobiologia" increased from 0.65 in 2003 to 1.45 in 2008.