JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR (JIF) IN DIGITAL ERA

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International Journal of Library and Information Science (IJLIS), ISSN: 2277 3533(Print) ISSN: 2277 3584 (Online) Volume 1, Issue 1, January- April 2012, IAEME

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JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR (JIF) IN DIGITAL ERA

N.TAMILSELVAN

CHIEF LIBRARIAN & HEAD

RATHINAM TECHNICAL CAMPUS, COIMBATORE

Dr.S.BALASUBRAMANIAN

PRINCIPAL

RATHINAM TECHNICAL CAMPUS, COIMBATORE

ABSTRACT

Journal Impact measures and how their evolution Culminated in the journal

impact factor (JIF) produced by the Institute for Scientific Information. The paper showshow the various building blocks of the dominant JIF (published in the Journal Citation

Report - JCR) came into being. The paper argues that these building blocks were all

constructed fairly arbitrarily or for different purposes than those that govern the

contemporary use of the JIF. The results are a faulty method, widely open tomanipulation by journal editors and misuse by uncritical parties. The discussion examines

some solution offered to the bibliometrics and scientific communities considering the

wide use of this indicator at present.

KEYWORDS: Journals Impact Factor

INTRODUCTION

Over the last three decades, librarians and bibliometricians have progressively

come to rely on the journal impact factor (JIF). Moreover, interest in this indicator and itsderivatives has grown exponentially in the scientific community since 1995. Many

researchers have observed that the indicator is driving the publishing strategies ofscientists who want to maximize their average impact factor and how, similarly, journal

editors aspire to augment their JIF by using strategies that sometimes diverge

considerably from widely held beliefs on the basic ethics of science (see, e.g., [SMITH,1997]). Moreover, it is not uncommon to find these indicators being used to promote

researchers (see, e.g., [FUYONO & CYRANOSKI, 2006]. In response, bibliometricians

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LIBRARY AND

INFORMATION SCIENCE

ISSN : 2277 3533(Print)ISSN : 2277 3584(Online)Volume 1, Issue 1, January- April (2012), pp. 01-14

IAEME: www.iaeme.com/ijlis.html

IJLIS

I A E M E


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have increasingly tried to tame the beast by suggesting numerous improvements aimed

at increasing the validity of the JIF as a quantitative measure. Despite this growinginterest, there is, apart from GARFIELDs historical accounts [2006] and intellectual

biographies [BENSMAN, 2007], a notable scarcity of contributions to the conceptual

history of this important indicator

METHOD DEVELOPED BY UNITED STATES UNIVERSITY LIBRARIANS

The literature on the use of journal impact measures uniformly concludes that

GROSS & GROSS [1927] were the first to develop this method (see, e.g., [ALLEN,

1929; MCNEELY & CROSNO, 1930; GROSS & WOODFORD, 1931; HENKLE, 1938;BRODMAN, 1944; GARFIELD, 1955; RAISIG, 1960]. Gross and Gross sought to

address the rising problems of small colleges at a time when one of the biggest of these

[was] the problem of adequate library facility. GROSS & GROSS [1927] raised a

question that is still highly relevant today: What files of scientific periodicals are neededin a college library successfully to prepare the student for advanced work, taking into

consideration also those materials necessary for the stimulation and intellectualdevelopment of the faculty?

Gross and Gross rhetorically considered the compilation of a list of relevant

journals using a subjective approach; this strategy intended to outline the advantages oftheir more objective method: One way to answer this question would be merely to sit

down and compile a list of those journals which one considers indispensable. Such a

procedure might prove eminently successful in certain cases, but it seems reasonably

certain that often the result would be seasoned too much by the needs, likes and dislikesof the compiler.

Thus, one can note that the first use of journal impact calculation aimed tofacilitate the task of journal selection using objective quantitative methods, which is one

core aspect in the marketing of the most visible commercial product that has emerged

from this work Thomson Scientific's (formerly the Institute for Scientific Information,or ISI) Journal Citation Report (JCR). Moreover, an important feature in the development

of this method was that at the outset it was developed specifically to cater to the needs of

US librarians. For example, in a study of mechanical engineering, MCNEELY &

CROSNO [1930] stated: It will be noted that the list contains three American, oneEnglish, two German publications, and one French publication. The result is that the

English language publications predominate, but it is assumed that such should be the case

for American libraries.

As a consequence, the scientific investigator, the editor, and the librarian have one

thing in common i.e., they are required to base their decisions on certain objectivemeasures of assessing journal quality. Over the past 50 years, these measures of assessing

journal quality, also known as bibliometric indicators, have emerged as the chief

quantitative measures of the quality of the research papers published, the authors, andthat of the institution with which these researchers are associated.


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IMPACT FACTOR

Impact Factor is one of the quantitative tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing,

and comparing journals. It is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article"

in a journal has been cited in a particular year or period. The annual impact factor is a

ratio between citations and recent citable items published. Thus, the impact factor of ajournal is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items

published in that journal during the previous two years.

The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average

number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It isfrequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with

journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower

ones. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for

Scientific Information (ISI), now part of Thomson Reuters. Impact factors are calculatedyearly for those journals that are indexed in Thomson ReutersJournal Citation Reports.

OBJECTIVES

Gross and Gross first reported the use of counting references to rank scientific

journals.It was Garfield and Sher of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) who first

suggested how reference counting could measure impact but the term impact factor was

not used until the publication of the 1961 Science Citation Index (SCI) in 1963.The ISI,

which was founded by Eugene Garfield, is a Philadelphia-based company and is

presently owned by the Thomson Corporation of Toronto. The aim of creating the JournalImpact Factor (JIF) was to help select journals for the SCI. The inventors recognized a

core group of highly cited large journals that needed to be covered in the SCI, however,

they felt that this way a small but important group of review journals would gounrecognized. As a result, the JIF was created to compare journals regardless of their

size. A bi-product of the SCI was the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which was first

published in 1975. From 1975 to 1989, the JCR appeared as supplementary volumes inthe annual SCI. From 1990 to 1994, they have appeared in microfiche and in 1995 a

CDROM edition was launched. The current JCRs have two editions covering journals in

the areas of science, technology, and social sciences. These JCRs cover a total of 8,400

journals with a total of 5,876 journals from the science and technology industries alone.

Using optical character recognition software, the journals are first scanned. To

store a research paper in its database, ISI employees highlight the followingindicators/fields: author, address, journal title, volume, year, and page number. Next, a

computer takes a few bytes of information from each highlighted field to build up an

identifying code or 'tag' that is unique to that paper. A similar data capture and taggingprocess occurs for the references at the end of the paper. Algorithms then compare the

citation tags with any article tags already in the database and each successful match

counts as a citation.


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The ISI has three standardized measures for calculating the citations and articles

received over time. These measures are impact factor, immediacy index, and cited halflife.

JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR

Librarians and information scientists have been evaluating journals for at least 75

years. Gross and Gross conducted a classic study of citation patterns in the '20s. Others,including Estelle Brodman with her studies in the '40s of physiology journals and

subsequent reviews of the process, followed this lead. However, the advent of the

Thomson Reuters citation indexes made it possible to do computer-compiled statisticalreports not only on the output of journals but also in terms of citation frequency. And in

the '60s we invented the journal "impact factor." After using journal statistical data in-

house to compile the Science Citation Index (SCI) for many years, Thomson Reuters

began to publish Journal Citation Reports (JCR) in 1975 as part of the SCIand the

Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).

Informed and careful use of these impact data is essential. Users may be temptedto jump to ill-formed conclusions based on impact factor statistics unless several caveats

are considered.

HISTORY AND MEANING OF THE JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR

I first mentioned the idea of an impact factor in Science in 1955. With support

from the National Institutes of Health, the experimental Genetics Citation Index waspublished, and that led to the 1961 publication of the Science Citation Index. Irving H.

Sher and I created the journal impact factor to help select additional source journals. To

do this we simply re-sorted the author citation index into the journal citation index. Fromthis simple exercise, we learned that initially a core group of large and highly cited

journals needed to be covered in the new Science Citation Index (SCI). Consider that, in

2004, the Journal of Biological Chemistry published 6500 articles, whereas articles fromthe Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences were cited more than 300 000

times that year. Smaller journals might not be selected if we rely solely on publication

count,so we created the journal impact factor (JIF).

The provides a selective list of journals ranked by impact factor for 2004. The

also includes the total number of articles published in 2004, the total number of articles

published in 2002 plus 2003 (the JIF denominator), the citations to everything publishedin 2002 plus 2003 (the JIF numerator), and the total citations in 2004 for all articles ever

published in a given journal. Sorting by impact factor allows for the inclusion of many

small (in terms of total number of articles published) but influential journals. Obviously,sorting by total citations or other provided data would result in a different ranking.

The journal impact factor was created in the early 1960s by Eugene Garfield andIrving H. Sher to help select core group of highly cited journals for the Science Citation

Index. From its onset it was intended solely to compare journals regardless of their size.


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A journals impact factor is based on two factors: (a) a numerator denoting the number of

citations in the current year to any items published in the journal in the previous twoyears, and (b) a denominator denoting the number of substantive articles in the last two

years.

DEFINITION

Impact Factor is a measure of the number of citations within scientific journals.The impact factor is used to gauge the relative importance of a scientific journal within

its field. Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)

which is now part of Thomson, is the person who devised the impact factor. ThomsonScientific calculates impact factors annually for the journals it indexes.

CALCULATION FOR JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR

A= total cites in 1992B= 1992 cites to articles published in 1990-91 (this is a subset of A)

C= number of articles published in 1990-91

D= B/C = 1992 impact factor

METHOD OF CALCULATION

In a given period (Yearly/Half- yearly/ Quarterly/Monthly), the Journal ImpactFactor of a journal is the average number of citations received per paper published in that

journal during the one or two (One or More) Preceding periods.

For example (Calculation of Journal Impact Factor(JIF) Yearly) , if a journal hasan impact factor of 5 in 2009, then its papers published in 2007 and 2008 received 5

citations each on average. The 2011 impact factor of a journal would be calculated as

follows:

A = the number of times articles published in 2007 and 2008 were cited by journals,

books, patent document, thesis, project reports, news papers, conference/ seminar

proceedings, documents published in internet, notes and any other approved documents

during2009

B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2007 and 2008.("Citable items" are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, notes or any other documents

pre-reviewed before publishing it)

2011 impact factor = A/B.New journals, which are indexed from their first published issue, will receive an impact

factor after indexing it immediately.


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For Example a journal published first issue in June 2011, can get Journal Impact Factorfor July 2011 onwards.

The journal impact factor relates to a specific time period; it is possible to calculate it for

any desired period. The Journal Reference Reports (JRR) shows rankings of journals byjournal impact factor, if desired by discipline, such as mechanical engineering or human

resource management.

IMPACT FACTOR CALCULATED

Scientists have been trying to classify and evaluate the relative importance of

scientific and social journals for many years. One way to do so is to use citations patterns,

as developed by Gross and Gross in the 20s. Based on it, Thomson Reuters created two

citation indexes (the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index) thatcould be calculated by direct computer software, compiling all statistical reports.

This lead to the creation of the now commonly called impact factor, which includesnot only the output of journals but also the citation frequency of their articles. TheJournal Citation Reports was then created in 1975. The impact factor is a tool that can be

used to compare journals. Concretely, it measures the number of times an article is cited

during a specific period of time. For this, an article considered average is chosen. Inother words, the impact factor is the ratio between the number of citations that have been

made for this average article and the number of items that could be cited because they

have been published. The calculation is thus done by dividing the number of citations for

the current year to the number of articles published in the journal during the last 2 years.The impact factor is calculated every year for each journal (starting from the 2nd year of

publication) and the results for each journal are published in the Journal Citation Reports.

SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS IMPACT FACTOR CALCULATED

A= number of citations in year X for an average article

B= total number of publications for years X-1 and X-2

A/B= IF= impact factor for year X

The impact factor is particularly useful to estimate the real significance of the

number of citations or their frequency. Otherwise, bigger journals would have morearticles and more citations, but would not necessary be as relevant as smaller journal with

fewer publications. However, tit has its own limitations and should be used with care andby informed readers. One important limitation is that the impact factor of a journal doesnot necessarily indicate the number of citations for a specific article. Another one is that

the impact factor can depend on many variables such as the number of references in the

average article or the type of articles published and cited (reviews, letters, originalarticles). The information it provides should thus be used wisely!

TOOLS AND METHODS TO USE WITH IMPACT FACTORS


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Journal Citation Reports (JCR) includes not only the impact factor, but a numberof related metrics which can be used to evaluate journals(Mulford Library Help Sheet).

Additionally, the JCR Web site provides information on how to more effectively compare

journals with factors as review articles, self citations, and journal format changes.

A research study also strongly recommends use of additional mathematical

criteria to assess journal quality. It has concluded that the methodological quality ofclinical research articles includes impact factors of the publishing journal in conjunction

with citation rates, circulation rates, and low manuscript acceptance rates.

However, while the above mathematical computations are useful, they can never

replace peer review or reading and evaluating the quality of individually published

scientific articles.

IMPACT FACTOR IS GIVEN BY EUGENE GARFIELD

It is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal hasbeen cited in a given period of time.

The impact factor for a journal is calculated based on a three-year period, and canbe considered to be the average number of times published papers are cited up to two

years after publication. For example, the impact factor 2010 for a journal would be

calculated as follows:

A = the number of times articles published in 2008-9 were cited in indexed journals

during 2010

B = the number of articles, reviews, proceedings or notes published in 2008-2009

impact factor 2010 = A/B

(note that the impact factor 2009 will be actually published in 2010, because it could not

be calculated until all of the 2009 publications had been received. Impact factor 2010 will

be published in 2011)

TITLE CHANGE

A user's knowledge of the content and history of the journal studied is very

important for appropriate interpretation of impact factors. Situations such as those

mentioned above and others such as title change are very important, and oftenmisunderstood, considerations.

A title change affects the impact factor for two years after the change is made.The old and new titles are not unified unless the titles are in the same position

alphabetically. In the first year after the title change, the impact is not available for the


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new title unless the data for old and new can be unified. In the second year, the impact

factor is split. The new title may rank lower than expected and the old title may rankhigher than expected because only one year of source data is included in its calculation.

Title changes for the current year and the previous year are listed in the JCR guide.

Unified 1992 impact factor calculation for title change

A=1992 citations to articles published in 1990-91 (a1 + a2)A1=those for new title

A2=those for superseded title

B=number of articles published in 1990-91 (B1 + B2)B1=those for new title

B2=those for superseded title

C=unified impact factor (A/B)

C1=A1/B1 = JCR factor for the new titleC2=A2/B2 = JCR factor for the superseded title

IMPORTANT POINTS RELATED TO JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR

Journal Impact Factor cannot be calculated for new journals. I mean the impactfactor of a journal is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to

the source items published in that journal during the previous two years, henceimpact factor can be calculated after completing the minimum of 3 years of

publication.

Journal Impact Factor will be a quotient factor only and will not be a qualityfactor.

Journal Impact Factor will not be related to quality of content and quality of peerreview, it is only a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in ajournal has been cited in a particular year or period.

Journal which publishes more review articles will get highest impact factors.THOMSON REUTERS JOURNAL SELECTION PROCESS

Thomson Reuters is committed to providing comprehensive coverage of theworld's most important and influential journals to meet its subscribers' current awareness

and retrospective information retrieval needs. Today Web of Science SM covers nearly

12,000 international and regional journals and book series in every area of the naturalsciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

But comprehensive does not necessarily mean all-inclusive

Select the question to show its corresponding answer

Why Be SelectiveThe Evaluation Process

Basic Journal Standards


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Editorial Content

As mentioned above, an essential core of scientific literature forms the basis for

all scholarly disciplines. However, this core is not static - scientific research

continues to give rise to specialized fields of studies, and new journals emerge as

published research on new topics achieves critical mass. Thomson Reuters editorsdetermine if the content of a journal under evaluation will enrich the database or if

the topic is already adequately addressed in existing coverage.With an enormous amount of citation data readily available to them, and their

daily observation of virtually every new scholarly journal published, Thomson

Reuters editors are well positioned to spot emerging topics and active fields in theliterature.

USING THE THOMSON REUTERS IMPACT FACTOR

The Thomson Reuters Impact Factor, as explained in the last essay, is one of the

evaluation tools provided by Thomson ReutersJournal Citation Reports(JCR). Manyfeatures of the JCR can be applied to the real-world task of journal evaluation, and thespecific needs of the user ultimately determine which of those components is the most

appropriate for the task.

BRADFORD'S LAW

Doomsday predictions about the exponential growth of scientific literature have

not come to pass. While the growth has been slower than forecasted, it neverthelesswarrants concern. Even though the reality of the current situation is not nearly as

frightening as had been anticipated, the need to be selective in journal management is all

the more imperative.

As Bradford's Law predicts, a small percentage of journals accounts for a large

percentage of what is published. An even smaller percentage accounts for what is cited.In other words, there are diminishing returns in trying to cover the literature exhaustively.

Careful selection is, therefore, an effective way to avoid "documentary chaos." This term,

coined by Samuel C. Bradford, the former librarian of the Science Museum in London,

refers to the anxiety that one feels in contemplating the information explosion.Recognizing the need of readers to scan the most significant journals published was the

raison d'etre for Current Contents.

It is understandable that publishers are concerned that their journals are selected

by Thomson Reuters for inclusion in its database. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that the

survival of a particular journal depends on Thomson Reuters decision to cover it in

Current Contents. A journal's ultimate success depends upon its quality, distribution, and

many other competitive factors including cost and timeliness. Any one of these factors,

including coverage by Thomson Reuters, can make the difference between success andfailure.


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SCI SEARCH STRATEGIES

There are four different ways to search the printed SCI. Each focuses on a

different strategy. A search might begin with the Citation Index, which is arranged

alphabetically by the firstauthor. All publications cited during the designated indexing

period are listed under the first author's name, just as they appear in the journals.On the other hand, all authors of articles recorded by Thomson Reuters during the

period are indexed in the Source Index. This index lists the full title of each paper. Usethe Source Index to find out what an author has published.

To research a topic by title word or subject, use the Permuterm Subject Index(PSI). This is essentially a title word or natural language index. However, the CD-ROM

version has augmented this capability through SCI's KeyWords Plus based on recurring

words or phrases appearing in a paper's list of cited references. The CD-ROM version

also includes author key words.

The Corporate Index is arranged geographically. It identifies papers published ata specific institution. The printed listings are organized both alphabetically andgeographically. All of these indexing approaches can be combined when using the online

and CD-ROM versions to find, for example, the papers that are published on a given

topic at a particular university or company.

With Journal Citation Reports, you can:

Librarians can support, evaluate and document the value of their library researchinvestments.

Publishers can determine journals influence in the marketplace, to revieweditorial policies and strategic direction, monitor competitors, and identify newopportunities.

Authors and editors can identify the most appropriate, influential journals inwhich to publish.

Researchers can discover where to find the current reading list in their respectivefields.

Information analysts and bibliometricians can track bibliometric and citationtrends and patterns.

Journal Citation Reports

Sort journal data by clearly defined fields: Impact Factor, Immediacy Index,Total Cites, Total Articles, Cited Half-Life, or Journal Title.

Sort subject category data by clearly defined fields: Total Cites, MedianImpact Factor, Aggregate Impact Factor, Aggregate Immediacy Index,

Aggregated Cited Half-Life, Number of Journals in Category, Number of Articles

in Category.

View a journals impact with a five-year Impact Factor trend graph.


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Understand a journals citation influence and prestige with Eigenfactor Metrics five-year metrics that consider scholarly literature as a network ofjournal-to-journal relationships.

Visualize impact factor by journal category with impact factor boxplots. Rank journals in multiple categories.

See how journal self-citations affect impact factor. Full integration with ISI Web of Knowledge lets you link from Web of Science

to JCR Web; from JCR journal records to ulrichsweb.com and recent CurrentContents Connect tables of contents; and to and from your librarys OPAC.

VALIDITY

The impact factor is highly discipline-dependent. The percentage of total citationsoccurring in the first two years after publication varies highly among disciplines

from 1-3 percent in the mathematical and physical sciences to 5-8 percent in thebiological sciences.

The impact factor could not be reproduced in an independent audit.

The impact factor refers to the average number of citations per paper, but this isnot a normal distribution. It is rather a Bradford distribution, as predicted by

theory. Being an arithmetic mean, the impact factor therefore is not a valid

representation of this distribution and unfit for citation evaluation.

In the short term especially in the case of low-impact-factor journals manyof the citations to a certain article are made in papers written by the author(s) of

the original article. This means that counting citations may be independent of the

real "impact" of the work among investigators. Garfield, however, maintains thatthis phenomenon hardly influences a journal's impact factor. Moreover, a study of

author self-citations in diabetes literature found that the frequency of author self-

citation was not associated with the quality of publications. Similarly, journalself-citation is common in journals dealing in specialized topics having high

overlap in readership and authors, and is not necessarily a sign of low quality or

manipulation.

Journal ranking lists constructed based on the impact factor only moderatelycorrelate with journal ranking lists based on the results of an expert survey.

EDITORIAL POLICIES WHICH AFFECT THE IMPACT FACTOR

A journal can adopt editorial policies that increase its impact factor.

Journals may publish a larger percentage of review articles which generally arecited more than research reports. Therefore review articles can raise the impact

factor of the journal and review journals will therefore often have the highestimpact factors in their respective fields. Conversely, journals may choose not to

publish minor articles, such as case reports in medical journals, which are unlikely

to be cited and would reduce the average citation per article.

Journals may change the fraction of "citable items" compared to front-matter inthe denominator of the IF equation. Which types of articles are considered


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"citable" is largely a matter of negotiation between journals and Thomson

Scientific. As a result of such negotiations, impact factor variations of more than300% have been observed. For instance, editorials in a journal are not considered

to be citable items and therefore do not enter into the denominator of the impact

factor. However, citations to such items will still enter into the numerator, thereby

inflating the impact factor. In addition, if such items cite other articles (often evenfrom the same journal), those citations will be counted and will increase the

citation count for the cited journal. This effect is hard to evaluate, for thedistinction between editorial comment and short original articles is not always

obvious. "Letters to the editor" might refer to either class.

Several methods, not necessarily with nefarious intent, exist for a journal to citearticles in the same journal which will increase the journal's impact factor.

RESPONSES

Because "the impact factor is not always a reliable instrument" in November 2007the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) issued an official statementrecommending "that journal impact factors are used only - and cautiously - formeasuring and comparing the influence of entire journals, but not for the

assessment of single papers, and certainly not for the assessment of researchers or

research programmes".

In July 2008, the International Council for Science (ICSU) Committee onFreedom and Responsibility in the conduct of Science (CFRS) issued a

"Statement on publication practices and indices and the role of peer review in

research assessment", suggesting some possible solutions, e.g. consideringpenalising scientists for an excessive number of publications per year.

In February 2010, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Foundation forScience) published new guidelines to evaluate only articles and no bibliometricinformation on candidates to be evaluated in all decisions concerning

"...performance-based funding allocations, postdoctoral qualifications,

appointments, or reviewing funding proposals, [where] increasing importance hasbeen given to numerical indicators such as the h-index and the impact factor".

This decision follows similar ones of the National Science Foundation (US) or the

Research Assessment Exercise (UK).[citation needed]

MISUSES OF THE IMPACT FACTOR AS A SOLE CRITERIA

Promotion and tenure decisions (impact factors of the journals where an authorhas published)

Journal selection by researchers for article submissions University administrators rating or ranking academic and research programs

within and across an institutions

Establishment of journal reputations by their publishers to attract subscriptionsand participation by top authors


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An impact factor indicates to some extent the quality of a journal as a whole.

However, the impact factor alone does not indicate the quality of individual articleswithin a journal, the overall quality of the research performed authors publishing within

journals with impact factors, or the prestige of associated academic departments,

research programs, or institutions.

CONCLUSION

The impact factor is a very useful tool for evaluation of journals, but it must be

used discreetly. Considerations include the amount of review or other types of materialpublished in a journal, variations between disciplines, and item-by-item impact. The

journal's status in regard to coverage in the ISI databases as well as the occurrence of a

title change are also very important. In the next essay we will look at some examples of

how to put tools for journal evaluation into use.

Hoeffel and Garfield who expressed the situation succinctly as shown below:

"Impact factors is not a perfect tool to measure the quality of articles but there is

nothing better and it has the advantage of already being in existence and is, therefore, a

good technique for scientific evaluation. Experience has shown that in each specialty thebest journals are those in which it is most difficult to have an article accepted, and these

are the journals that have a high impact factor. These journals existed long before the

impact factor was devised. The use of impact factor as a measure of quality is widespread

because it fits well with the opinion we have in each field of the best journals in ourspecialty". Finally Garfield "cautioned the use of impact factor to weigh the influence of

a paper amounts to a prediction, albeit coloured by probabilities.

REFERENCE

1. Gannon F. The impact of the impact factor. EMBO Rep 2000; 1:293

2. Martin-Sempere MJ, Rey-rocha J and Garzon-Garcia B. Assessing quality of

Domestic Scientific journals in genographically oriented disciplines: Scientists'

judgments versus citations. Res Eval 2002; 11:149-54.

3. Buchtel HA. Libraries and the Academy. Cortex 2001; 37:455-6

4. Davis PM. Where to spend our e-journal money? Defining a university library's core

collection through citation analysis. Vol. 2. Baltimore, USA: John Hopkins

University Press; 2002. p. 155-66.

5. http://www.sciencedirect.com

6. Resource: Science gateway

7. Eugene Garfield, PhD, Thomson Scientific, 3501 Market St, Philadelphia, PA 19104


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[email protected] .

8. Impact Factor for Scientific Journals -2008 [PDF]

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11. Garfield E. 2006. The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. JAMA.

295(1):90-93. Available to UT faculty, staff, and students at

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12. Pringle J. 2008. Trends in the use of ISI citation databases for evaluation. Learned

Publishing. 21(2):85-91. Available to UT faculty, staff, and students through the UT

Libraries catalog at http://utmost.cl.utoledo.edu/record=b2593314

13. Roeser, RJ. 2007. The use and misuse of America and the JCR impact factor.

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14. Current Contents print editions July 18, 1994, when Thomson Reuters was known as

the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).

15. Garfield E. The impact factor. Current Contents (25):3-7, 20 June 1994.

16. Garfield E. Prestige versus impact: Established images of journals, like institutions,

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1989. Vol. 10. p. 263-4.

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JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR (JIF) IN DIGITAL ERA