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Journal Impact Factors Tutorial

Journal impact factors are a measure of how often articles in a journal are cited over a two year period. They were originally created in the 1960s to help select journals for inclusion in the Science Citation Index. Key factors that influence a journal's impact factor include the number of citations articles receive, how recently they were published, the size of the field, and self-citations. While impact factors are commonly used to evaluate journals, there are also many limitations to relying solely on this metric, such as variations in impact factors over time and differences between article and journal level impact. Alternatives for evaluating quality include expert recommendations, editorial standards, and time from submission to publication.

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84 views

Journal Impact Factors Tutorial

Journal impact factors are a measure of how often articles in a journal are cited over a two year period. They were originally created in the 1960s to help select journals for inclusion in the Science Citation Index. Key factors that influence a journal's impact factor include the number of citations articles receive, how recently they were published, the size of the field, and self-citations. While impact factors are commonly used to evaluate journals, there are also many limitations to relying solely on this metric, such as variations in impact factors over time and differences between article and journal level impact. Alternatives for evaluating quality include expert recommendations, editorial standards, and time from submission to publication.

Uploaded by

Islam Hasan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Journal Impact Factors:

What Are They


&
How Can They Be Used?
Pamela Sherwill, MLS, AHIP
April 27, 2004
History Of Impact Factors
• Created in the 60s to select journals for
Science Citation Index
• Developed to compare journals regardless
of their size
• Journal Impact Factors (IF) = Article IF
• Size & breadth of a scientific field
determines “super-cited” papers
• Delays in reviewing and publication affects
IF
Impact Factor:
A Definition

Journals with high IF publish


articles that are cited more often
than journals with lower IF. If
citation numbers are taken as a
measure of quality, then these
journals are high ranking by this
measure.
Key Determinants
The key determinants are not the number of
authors or articles in the field but the citation
density and the age of the literature cited.
The average number of citations per article
and the immediacy of citation are the
significant elements. The size of a field will
generally increase the number of ‘super-cited’
papers.
---Eugene Garfield
What Is An Impact Factor ?
• # of current citations a journal receives
divided by the number of articles
published in the two preceding years

Citation Half Life


• How long articles in a journal continue
to be cited after publication
Citation Density
• Mean # of references cited per article
• Varies by discipline – lower in math than life
sciences
• Higher in review articles

Half-Life
• # of retrospective years required to find 50%
of the cited references
Calculating Impact Factors

# of citations in the current year for a journal

# items published in the journal for the last 2 years


What Influences IF?
• Review articles cited more often
• Case reports rarely cited
• Rapid publication time >
• Self-citations >
• Bias towards rapidly evolving fields
• Cites not counted after 2 years
• Specialty journals have < IF
Impact Factors
• Scientific journals score > than clinical ones
• US journals score > than European
• Review articles score > than original articles
• Methodological papers may score > than
those with new data
• Free electronic access > the IF of a journal
How Are IFs Used?
• Judge a publication’s quality or prestige
• Assess academic productivity
• Authors choosing where to publish
• Evaluate an author or journal editor
• Decisions for tenure & promotion
• By libraries to make collection decisions
Nursing Journal Facts
• Journal Citation Reports (the source of IFs)
rates 33 general nursing journals
• PubMed indexes 248 refereed nursing
journals
• CINAHL indexes 548 active nursing journals
• ISI regards librarians as their primary
customers
• ISI to > # of Nursing journals by 23 in 2006
Determining Journal
Quality
• Nursing limited # of journals rated (33)
• General nursing journals – not specialty
• Nursing journals – impact factors <2
• IF does not measure impact of specific
articles
• Not every article in a high impact journal is of
high quality
Self-Citations
• Encouraged by some editors/journals
• Not subtracted when IF is calculated
• Authors accumulate many self-citations
• ISI claims it has little effect on the relative
rank of highly ranked journals
• Journals with IF < .5 have high self-
citation rates
Issues With JCR Database
• Prestige/quality is a murky concept
• Recent articles not enough time to be cited
• Citations not evenly distributed among
articles in an issue
• Journal impact factor not article impact
factor
• Pure clinicians read clinical articles but do
not write or cite
Issues With JCR Database
(continued)

• Rapidly expanding fields tend to have >IF


• Letters, editorials, and news items not
counted in article total but if cited are
counted as citations for the journal
• Small # of articles lead to a large proportion
of citations in a journal
• Limited # of evaluated journals
Impact Factor Limitations
• Reflect the journal rather than the article
• Vary with time in numbers & ranking
• Changes in clinical interest affects IF
• Not related to the peer review process
• Can be manipulated by authors or editors
• 2-year period is arbitrary - not empirically based
• Journal availability affects the ranking
• Author citation errors
Limitations (continued)
• Journal IF involve large populations of articles
and citations
• Authors produce smaller numbers of articles
• 80/20 rule – 20% of the articles account for 80%
of the citations
• IF can vary from journal issue to issue
• IF vary from year to year
• Lack of empiric studies on IF as measure of
quality
Impact Factor
Alternatives
• No other formal evaluation tool
• Professional recommendations
• Refereed journals
• Editor’s reputation
• Editorial standards
• Experience & stature of editor & board
Alternatives

• Time from acceptance to publication


• Acceptance/rejection rate
• Best quality journals are often most
competitive in acceptance for
publication
Thank You

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