How Academic Journals Handle Scholar Obituaries
Most research journals don't have a formal process for publishing obituaries. You'll find them scattered across sections, sometimes in the editorial matter, sometimes as standalone contributions. The visibility varies by publisher, discipline, and whether the journal maintains a dedicated memorial section. When I first tried to gauge whether an obituary contributed meaningfully to citation metrics, I ran into a wall. Standard tracking tools like Scopus and Web of Science don't classify memorial pieces as regular citations. A 2019 obituary in a solid mid-tier journal might accumulate 12 citations over three years if other authors reference the deceased researcher's methodology, but the obituary itself rarely gets counted in the author's h-index calculation. Publishers knew this, so they started creating special memorial issues with their own indexing policies. The SCImago Journal Rank system weights citations by the source journal's prestige, which means an obituary cited in a high-SJR journal carries more weight than one cited in a lower-ranked publication. I learned this the hard way when my department published a memorial piece that we thought would boost our visibility, only to discover it was being cited in a journal with an SJR of 0.18 rather than the 2.4 range we'd hoped for.
Practical Steps for Publishing and Tracking
If you're working with a journal editor to submit an obituary, expect a review period of four to eight weeks. Some journals require the piece to meet their regular article length guidelines, typically 800 to 2000 words. Others allow shorter contributions of 500 words in a dedicated news section. Make sure the obituary includes standard biographical data, major publications, institutional affiliations, and a brief description of the researcher's impact on the field. Editors appreciate this structure because it makes the piece easier to index and reference later. I've seen good obituaries get rejected simply because they read more like informal tributes than structured academic summaries.
Measuring Impact After Publication
Post-publication tracking requires patience. Most obituaries reach peak citation activity between six months and two years after appearing. Google Scholar captures these references more reliably than formal databases, but it also includes non-academic mentions that might not reflect genuine scholarly engagement. For accurate metrics, check the citing journal's SJR at the time of citation. A paper referencing your memorial piece in a top-10% journal tells you something different than a reference in a regional or lower-tier publication. I use a spreadsheet to track each citation with its journal name, SJR value, and the year of publication. This approach took about three hours for a single obituary with 47 citations, but the data quality justified the effort.
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Common Problems and Workarounds
Publisher policies on obituary indexing differ significantly. Elsevier journals often include memorial pieces in their citation databases, while some Springer titles exclude them from standard citation counts. BMC journals have a mixed record depending on the specific publication. I recommend checking the journal's instructions for authors before submitting, or emailing the editorial office directly to ask about citation tracking policies. Citation style affects discoverability. APA and Chicago styles both handle obituary references differently, and some journals use their own modified formats. When my institution published a memorial in a psychology journal that used a unique reference format, Google Scholar initially failed to parse the citation correctly. I manually entered the reference details into my tracking spreadsheet and contacted the journal's production team to update their metadata. This workaround took about 45 minutes and resolved the indexing issue within two weeks.
Alternative Approaches
If your goal is maximizing visibility for honoring a scholar's legacy, consider publishing a regular research article instead of an obituary. Research articles receive substantially more citations over time, typically 3 to 8 times higher depending on the field and journal quality. A memorial issue might generate 15 to 30 citations in its first three years, while a well-cited research article in the same journal could reach 60 to 150 citations. Some researchers combine both approaches by writing a short obituary for the journal and a longer perspective or review article that synthesizes the deceased scholar's contributions. This dual strategy usually produces better outcomes than relying solely on the memorial piece. I've seen departments budget for both types of publications when honoring a prominent colleague, with the obituary running 1200 words and the review article extending to 6000 words. The timeline for publication differs between the two formats. Obituaries typically appear within six to twelve weeks, while review articles undergo standard peer review lasting three to six months. If your department needs to honor a scholar quickly, the obituary route provides faster results, even if the long-term citation impact is lower.
Journal selection matters more for obituaries than many people realize. A memorial piece in a journal with an SJR above 1.5 receives more attention than the same piece in a journal below 0.5. The difference isn't just about prestige, though. Higher-SJR journals tend to have better editorial processes for handling memorial contributions, including proper metadata tagging and cross-referencing with the deceased researcher's published work.
