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What is Journal Impact Factor?

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Daunted by the idea of choosing the right journal for your paper? Don’t be. Metrics have become an everyday word in scholarship, in general. Within its many fields of research – if not all of them – they provide important data about a journal’s impact and relevance among its readers. In an era of information proliferation, it has become increasingly important to know where to capture the most attention and interest of your target audience.

So, whenever you are in doubt about which journal suits you better, don’t forget to browse its metrics; they will certainly help you with the decision-making process. Start, for example, with the Journal Impact Factor.

Impact factor (IF) is a measure of the number of times an average paper in a journal is cited, during a year. Clarivate Analytics releases the Journal Impact Factors annually as part of the Web of Science Journal Citation Reports®. Only journals listed in the Science Citation Index Expanded® (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index® (SSCI) receive an Impact Factor.

What is a good impact factor for a scientific journal?

Impact Factors are used to measure the importance of a journal by calculating the number of times selected articles are cited within a particular year. Hence, the higher the number of citations or articles coming from a particular journal, or impact factor, the higher it is ranked. IF is also a powerful tool if you want to compare journals in the subject category.

Measuring a Journal Impact Factor:

• CiteScore metrics – helps to measure journal citation impact. Free, comprehensive, transparent and current metrics calculated using data from Scopus®, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature.
• SJR – or SCImago Journal Rank, is based on the concept of a transfer of prestige between journals via their citation links.
• SNIP – or Source Normalized Impact per Paper, is a sophisticated metric that accounts for field-specific differences in citation practices.
• JIF – or Journal Impact Factor is calculated by Clarivate Analytics as the average of the sum of the citations received in a given year to a journal’s previous two years of publications, divided by the sum of “citable” publications in the previous two years.
• H-index – Although originally conceived as an author-level metric, the H -index has been being applied to higher-order aggregations of research publications, including journals.

Deciding the perfect journal for your paper is an important step. Metrics are excellent tools to guide you through the process. However, we also recommend you not neglect a perfectly written text, not only scientific and grammatically but also fitting the chosen journal’s requirements and scope. At Elsevier, we provide text-editing services that aim to amend and adjust your manuscript, to increase its chances of a successful acceptance by your target journal. Although each journal has its own editorial team, the overall quality, language and whether the article is innovative may also play a role.

Language Editing Services by Elsevier Author Services:

We know that, as an academic researcher, you have many things to do to stay relevant.

Writing relevant manuscripts is a crucial part of your endeavors.

That’s why we, at Elsevier Author Service s, support you throughout your publication journey with a suite of products and services to help improve your manuscript before submission.

Check our video Reach the highest standard with Elsevier Author Services to learn more about Author Services.

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The Journal Impact Factor (sometimes abbreviated to JIF or IF) is a metric that has been in use for decades. Initially created as a tool to help librarians decide which journals to subscribe to, it has changed over the years to be used in a variety of ways.

While some scholars still use the JIF to drive publication decisions, the many limitations of this metric mean that it is important not to use it as a proxy for the quality of an individual research output or for an individual researcher's contributions.

Impact Factor

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Impact Factor: Your Questions Answered

What does the impact factor measure? The Journal Impact Factor measures the frequency with which the “average article” in a journal has been cited in the last two years. As such, it may help reflect the importance of a journal in its field.

How is the impact factor calculated? The Journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year. The Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years. An Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two year ago have been cited one time. Citing articles may be from the same journal; most citing articles are from different journals. More details as well as graphical representations are available via Clarivate.

Who produces the impact factor? The Journal Impact Factor is calculated every year in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database . JCR has been releasing impact factor data annually since 1975. The criteria and calculations used to calculate the metric have changed over time. 

Do all journals have an impact factor? No. Journals indexed in the databases  Science Citation Index Expanded  or the  Social Sciences Citation Index  receive a Journal Impact Factor. Inclusion in these databases is competitive and require journals to meet certain criteria .

Just because a journal does not have an impact factor, does not mean that it is of low quality or low impact in its field.

Journals can be removed from the JCR database for a number of reasons, including unethical behaviour .

Is there more than one metric for measuring journal impact? As a new academic author, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the number of metrics promoted by various publishers! There are a number of other metrics that purport to measure the impact of journals; however, the Journal Impact Factor continues to be the most influential. Other journal impact metrics include:

• Cite Score : This metric is similar to the Journal Impact factor, but uses a slightly different calculation (e.g. a four year time period rather than two), and is produced by a different company. Can be found in the Scopus database.
• Eigenfactor : This metric is intended to give a measure of how likely a journal is to be used, and is thought to reflect how frequently an average researcher would access content from that journal.
• Source Normalized Impact Factor (SNIP) : This metric measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field. The impact of a single citation is given higher value in subject areas where citations are less likely, and vice versa.  As such, SNIP is meant to correct for differences in citation practices between various fields, thereby allowing for more accurate between-field comparisons of citation impact. Also found in the Scopus database.

Is impact factor important in my discipline? Use of the impact factor to drive publication decisions is very field specific. Talk to your advisor, mentors, and peers to find out if this metric, or any others, are important in your discipline. At an institutional level, the University of Calgary signed on to the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) in 2021. DORA explicitly guides against using the impact factor in decisions relating to funding, appointment, and promotion . 

What is a "good" impact factor? This is a very difficult question to answer! The numerical value of impact factors varies greatly between disciplines and even sub-disciplines, due to different publishing and citing patterns. You can take a look at how journals are ranked by discipline by performing a subject search in Journal Citation Reports . This will help you understand what high impact journals in a particular field are.

What are some criticisms of the impact factor? There is a large body of research pointing to the flaws and inappropriate uses of the impact factor and other research metrics. Some key criticisms include:

• Citation distributions within journals are highly skewed: for example, one "blockbuster" paper or highly cited item such as a review can artificially inflate the metric.
• Journal Impact Factors can be manipulated (or “gamed”) by editorial policy. For example, editors may encourage prospective authors to cite other items published in the same journal.
• Data used to calculate the Journal Impact Factors are neither transparent nor openly available to the public.

Unless otherwise noted, content is this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . 

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Scholarly Impact and Citation Analysis

• More Information
• Google Scholar
• Scopus: Citation Analysis for an Article or an Author
• WOS: Citation Analysis for an Author
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• Analyzing Journals Using JCR
• Analyzing Journals using Scopus
• Journal Impact Factor: What is it?
• Google Scholar Metrics
• Citation Count for Books

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Journal Impact Factor--What is it?

Journal Impact Factor

An offshoot of citation analysis is Journal Impact Factor (JIF) which is used to sort or rank journals by their relative importance. The underlying assumption behind Impact Factors (IF) is that journals with high IF publish articles that are cited more often than journals with lower IF.

Impact factors may be used by:

• Authors to decide where to submit an article for publication.
• Libraries to make collection development decisions
• Academic departments to assess academic productivity
• Academic departments to make decisions on promotion and tenure.

Where to find Journal Impact Factors?

The most notable source for journal impact factors is the annual publication called the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by Thomson Scientific.

How is the Journal Impact Factor Calculated?

Thomson defines impact factor as, “The journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year. The Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years. An Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two year ago have been cited one time. An Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published one or two year ago have been cited two and a half times. Citing articles may be from the same journal; most citing articles are from different journals.”

A journal's impact factor for 2008 would be calculated by taking the number of citations in 2008 to articles that were published in 2007 and 2006 and dividing that number by the total number of articles published in that same journal in 2007 and 2006.Below is how Thomson calculated the 2008 impact factor for the journal Academy of Management Review :

Thus, the Impact Factor of 6.125 for the journal, Academy of Management Review for 2008 indicates that on average, the articles published in this journal in the past two years have been cited about 6.125 times.

Factors to Consider While Consulting Impact Factors:

Publication Date : The impact factor is based on citation frequency of articles from a journal in their first few years of publication. This does not serve well the journals with articles that get cited over a longer period of time (let's say, 10 years) rather than immediately. In other words, journals in rapidly expanding fields such as cell biology and computing tend to have much higher immediate citation rates leading to higher IFs than journals in fields like Education or Economics.

Journal Impact Factor not Article Impact Factor: Citations to articles in a journal are not evenly distributed. In fact, some articles in a journal may not be cited at all but a few highly cited articles could lead to a high IF. Therefore, the IF does not accurately reflect the quality of individual articles published in a journal. Also, journals with more issues and articles can have higher Impact Factors which could be misleading as it does not really reflect the quality of articles.

Review Articles: Review articles (which tend to receive more citations), editorials, letters, and news items are not counted in article total but if cited are counted as citations for the journal. This leaves room for manipulation of ratio used to calculate impact factors leading to inflated impact factors in some cases.

Clinical Journals: Clinical journals usually have low citation counts. This puts such journals at a disadvantage with research journals in the field that have higher citation counts.

Uneven Coverage : The Journal Citation Reports focuses much more on disciplines where the primary means of publishing is through journal article. It provides less coverage to areas in Social Sciences and Humanities, where books and other publishing formats are more prevalent.

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What is a good impact factor?

What is an impact factor?

How is an impact factor calculated, how to find the impact factor of a journal, frequently asked questions about impact factors, related articles.

An impact factor measures the average number of a journal's citations in a two-year period. Ultimately, this measure calculates the rank of the journal in question. The more citations a journal has, the higher ranked it is. With higher ranking comes more popularity, and most importantly, credibility.

The calculation of the impact factor of a journal is quite easy. The number of citations of a journal is divided by the number of citable articles (from the same journal) from a two-year period.

X= the number of times articles published in 2018 and 2019 were cited by indexed journals during 2020

Y= the total number of published (citable) articles in 2018 and 2019

X/Y= 2020 impact factor of a journal

Usually, the impact factor of a journal is measured by different entities. You can find a journal's impact factor by referring to the Journal Citations Report (JCR), Scopus , or Resurchify . You only need to type in the title, publisher’s name, ISSN, or search by subject category.

It’s worth highlighting that the impact factor is used to compare journals from the same fields. A history journal cannot be compared to a science journal. Therefore, there is no set impact factor number considered to be ideal since each field has a different measurement. In general, an impact factor of 10 or higher is considered remarkable, while 3 is good, and the average score is less than 1.

The very prestigious journal Nature had an impact factor of 69.504 in the year 2021.

➡️ Learn more: What is a good h-index?

An impact factor measures the average number of a journal's citations, in a two-year period. Ultimately, this measure calculates the rank of the journal in question.

The number of citations of a journal is divided by the number of citable articles (from the same journal) from a two year period.

X= the number of cited articles from 2018 and 2019 in 2020

Y= the number of published articles in 2018 and 2019

You can find a journal's impact factor by referring to the Journal Citations Report (JCR) or Scopus .

In general, an impact factor of 10 or higher is considered remarkable, while 3 is good, and the average score is less than 1.

Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), invented the measurement known as impact factor. You can read more about this in Origins of the journal impact factor .

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Introduction to Impact Factor and Other Research Metrics

• Types of Metrics

Impact Factor

• Identifying Journals
• More Resources

More Information

• About Journal Impact Factor Visit this article published by Thomson Reuters on journal impact factor to learn more about the bibliometric and how it measures importance.
• Annual Reviews Rankings in JCR Visit this page to see how Annual Review Journals currently rank in Journal Citation Reports.
• SCImago Journal and Country Rank The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a publicly available portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus database.

Ask a Librarian

Impact factor,  or Journal Impact Factor,  is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" published in a given scholarly journal has been cited in a particular year or period and is often used to measure or describe the importance of a particular journal to its field. Impact factor was originally developed by Eugene Garfield, the founder of Institute of Scientific Information, which is now a part of Clarivate Analytics. Journal Impact Factor can be found in the  Journal Citation Reports or the JCR, as it's commonly known. Over the years various organizations have been created similar journal-level metrics, such as  SCImago Journal & Country Rank .

This page describes how to find impact factor in Journal Citation Reports .

Journal Citation Reports

Clarivate Analytics (formerly Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)) ranks, evaluates, and compares journals within subject categories and publishes the results in Journal Citation Reports . Journal Citation Reports provides ranking for journals in science, technology, and the social sciences. For every journal, the database collects and/or calculates information such as:

• citation/article counts
• impact factor
• immediacy index
• cited half-life
• citing half-life
• source data listing
• citing journal listing
• cited journal listing
• publisher information
• subject categories

Find Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

Follow the instructions below to find the Journal Citation Reports using the Library's resources.

• Begin at the Library homepage .
• Click on the orange tab that says "Find Materials," then scroll down until you see a laptop icon with the words "Databases by Subject and A-Z"; click on the icon.
• Type journal citations reports in the search box on the left side of the screen and then click on the magnifying glass to search that title.
• Your result will say "Journal Citation Reports"; click on it. It might ask you to provide your Net ID and password if you are off campus.

Find the Impact Factor

• Once in the database you either search by journal title (if you know which journal you want to see) or browse by category, which will let you view journals by JIF by discipline.
• On the left side you can choose search criteria, like impact factor range, year, and if the journal is open access.
• It is important to choose the right edition based on your subject area, as you won't be able to see specific journals if you choose the wrong one. Once you have finished selecting what to search, click Submit.
• You can't access impact factors from last year because the calculations only happen every two years (i.e. if the current year is 2021 the farthest you can go back is 2020). Most people choose the most current year they can access.
• Journals limited by the subject area, publisher, or geographic region.
• View all journals in order to browse.
• Search for a specific journal if you already know its title

Once you find a journal, the JCR gives you information about the journal, including the journal's abbreviations, how often it is published each year, the publisher, and the ISSN. 

Controversy

Many people have questioned the legitimacy of impact factor. Here are a few reasons why:

• Impact factor focuses purely on the numbers. There is no consideration of qualitative elements that have become important in today's world.
• Impact factor fails to incorporate more recent ways of sharing and using research, including Twitter mentions and posts, citation management downloads, and news and community information.
• Because impact factor is based on citations in only indexed journals , it fails to incorporate statistics from journals that might not be indexed and other sources like conference papers (which are important in the social sciences).
• Basic or summary information is usually cited the most in academia. That means that journals that publish articles with basic information are more likely to have higher impact factors. Journals that publish obscure or innovative information might not have as high of an impact factor.
• Some argue that impact factor is encouraging scholars to stick with mainstream topics and research.
• Scholars don't always have to cite something for it to be influential. Sometimes researchers just read something and it influences them, regardless of if they cite it in a future paper or piece of research.
• The journals in the JCR are mostly published in English. This means that many international sources aren't included in the conversation.
• It has been argued that journals have the ability to skew impact factor for their own journal. Before publishing an author, they will ask the author to cite more articles within their journal so that their impact factor goes up. This is NOT a common occurrence but instead something we should be aware of.
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Impact factors: What they are, where to find them, how to use them

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More on Citation Metrics

Wikipedia has an excellent collection of articles on various types and aspects of citation metrics, including impact factors, H-indexing, citation analysis and more. Click the image below if you're interested in learning more.

This guide was created in support of the Fall 2022 UC Merced Library workshop, "Impact factors: What they are, where to find them, and how to use them." Here, we'll discuss impact factors with emphasis on their use in writing theses and dissertations for degree credit at UC Merced.

What is an impact factor?

The impact factor measures the number of times a journal article has been cited by researchers in a given year. It's used to measure the importance of a scholarly journal -- that is, its importance to the discipline or field its articles cover, and by extension, the researchers working in that discipline or field -- by measuring the number of times articles in that journal are cited.

• Generally, impact factors are the best way to determine a journal's relative importance in a particular field or discipline. Your own research will be more readily accepted if it's based on the top journals -- meaning, the journals with the highest impact factors -- in your field.
• Impact factors are not perfect, and can be gamed, so to speak. Many journals will attempt to increase their impact factors by requiring that authors whose work is accepted for publication include citations to articles published in those journals.

Creating the impact factor

• Journal impact factors are calculated on the total number of citable articles in the two most recent, previous years. So it's not possible to get a journal impact factor for the present year. In 2022, the most recent journal impact factors will have been calculated on 2020 and 2021.
• Because journal impact factors are calculated on two years of article citations, it's not possible to calculate an impact factor for new journals.
• An impact factor of 10 is an excellent impact factor and indicates that the journal is of major importance in a field or discipline.
• An impact factor of 3 is considered to be good.
• Average impact factors for most journals are less than 1. However, this doesn't indicate that a journal is of poor quality. It may be a journal that publishes research in a field that is not noted for research.
• Next: Which UC Merced databases include impact factors? >>
• Last Updated: Oct 20, 2022 10:28 AM
• URL: https://libguides.ucmerced.edu/impact-factors

Journal impact factors

Announcing the latest impact factors

The journal impact factor (JIF), as calculated by Clarivate Analytics, is a measure of the average number of times articles from a two-year time frame have been cited in a given year, according to citations captured in the Web of Science database.

The 2022 JIF (released in 2023), for example, was calculated as follows:

A = the number of times articles which published in 2010–2021 were cited in indexed journals during 2022 B = the total number of research and review articles from the journal published in 2020–2021

2022 JIF = A/B

This listing includes only journals that have a 2022 JIF. For a full list of journals published by APA, please visit the Journals homepage to browse our portfolio by title or subject.

Note: Categories marked with an asterisk (*) are in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE); categories marked with a dagger (†) are in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). All other categories are in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). Journal titles without a category are in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).

Following the release of the 2022 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) from Clarivate Analytics, APA Publishing is pleased to report that Journal Impact Factors (JIFs) have been assigned to 89% (79) of our titles. Among our ranked journals, 21% are in the top 10 of their categories and 44% are in their category’s top quartile.

Notably, 16 APA-published journals indexed in Clarivate’s Emerging Sources Citation Index received their first-ever JIFs, and they will be included in rankings starting in 2024:

• Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology (1.1 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 54: Society of Pediatric Psychology )
• Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research (1.1 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 13: Society of Consulting Psychology )
• Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice (1.7 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 43: Society for Couple and Family Psychology )
• Decision (1.5 JIF)
• Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences (1.3 JIF; published on behalf of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society )
• Journal of Psychotherapy Integration (3.5 JIF; published on behalf of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration )
• Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (1.3 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 24: Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology )
• Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology (1.2 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 48: Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence )
• Psychology of Leaders and Leadership , formerly The Psychologist-Manager Journal , listed under its previous title in the 2022 JCR (0.6 JIF; published on behalf of the Society of Psychologists in Leadership )
• Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice (2.0 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 30: Society of Psychological Hypnosis )
• Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain (1.3 JIF)
• Qualitative Psychology (8.5 JIF; published on behalf of The Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology, a section of APA Division 5 )
• Spirituality in Clinical Practice (1.7 JIF)
• Stigma and Health (3.0 IF)
• Translational Issues in Psychological Science (1.8 JIF)
• Traumatology (3.2 JIF; published on behalf of the Green Cross Academy of Traumatology )

According to Dr. Nandita Quaderi of Clarivate , “by expanding the JIF to all journals that have passed the rigorous Web of Science quality criteria, this latest enhancement also helps level the playing field for all quality journals including recently-launched journals, open access journals, journals with a niche or regionally-focused scope and journals from the Global South” (para. 6).

In addition to assigning JIFs to Emerging Sources Citation Index titles for the first time, the latest JCR reflected a number of significant changes , such as including online-first content (i.e., articles published online ahead of being assigned to a journal issue) in JIF calculations and displaying JIFs to one rather than three decimal places, which affected journal rankings.

In Clarivate’s competitive Social Sciences Citation Index—the primary index for psychology content—six APA-published titles saw an increase in their JIF, and 19 journals rose in rank within their category. Some examples include the following:

• Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne , published on behalf of the Canadian Psychological Association , saw a 75% increase in its JIF, rising from 2.621 to 4.6 and jumping in rank from 68th to 25th out of the 147 titles in the Psychology, Multidisciplinary category.
• Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale , published on behalf of the Canadian Psychological Association, had a 48% increase in its JIF, rising from 0.881 to 1.3.
• Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition , published on behalf of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition , rose in rank from 14th to 8th out of the 89 journals in the Psychology, Experimental category. This is the first time the journal has appeared in the category’s top 10.

Other portfolio highlights

• APA publishes six journals in the top quartile of the large and diverse Psychology, Multidisciplinary category: Psychological Bulletin (ranking 3rd out of 147 journals, 22.4 JIF), American Psychologist (ranking 5th, 16.4 JIF), Psychological Methods (ranking 13th, 7.0 JIF), Psychological Review (ranking 18th, 5.4 JIF), Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne (ranking 25th, 4.6 JIF; published on behalf of the Canadian Psychological Association), and Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (ranking 34th, 3.8 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 44: Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity ).

Psychological Bulletin boasts the highest JIF in APA’s portfolio (22.4 JIF), in addition to ranking 3rd out of the 147 journals in the Psychology, Multidisciplinary category, also ranks 3rd out of the 81 journals in the Psychology category within Clarivate’s Science Citation Index Expanded.

• Two APA journals rank in the top 20 of the Psychology, Applied category: Journal of Applied Psychology (ranking 5th, 9.9 JIF) and Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (ranking 18th, 5.1 JIF). Journal of Applied Psychology earned the most all-time citations (57,881, or 12.6% of all citations) in this 83-journal category.
• Psychoanalytic Psychology (1.1 JIF), published on behalf of APA Division 39: Division of Psychoanalysis , ranks 3rd of the 13 titles in the Psychology, Psychoanalysis category, marking over a decade in the category’s top quartile. In addition, on the basis of its Journal Citation Indicator (JCI; 1.3), a new field-normalized measurement of journal citation impact, the journal is ranked at number 1.
• Four APA titles rank in the top 20 of the Psychology, Experimental category: Emotion and Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (tied at the ranking of 8 out of 89 journals, 4.2 JIF), Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (ranking 12th, 4.1 JIF), and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (ranking 19th, 3.6 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 10: Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts ).

When ranked on the basis of their JCI, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts landed at number 2, followed by Journal of Experimental Psychology: General at 13, Emotion at 16, and Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition at 18.

• Five APA titles rank in the top quartile of the Psychology, Clinical category: Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy (ranking 12th out of 131, 6.3 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 56: Trauma Psychology ), Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (ranking 14th, 5.9 JIF), Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice (ranking 15th, 5.8 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 12: Society of Clinical Psychology ), Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science  (formerly Journal of Abnormal Psychology , listed under its previous title in the 2022 JCR; ranking 25th, 4.6 JIF), and Health Psychology (ranking 30th, 4.2 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 38: Society for Health Psychology ).

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology ranks 3rd for all-time citations (22,573, or 4% of all citations) in this 131-journal category.

• Three APA titles rank in the top 25 of the Psychology, Educational category: Journal of Educational Psychology (ranking 6th out of 60, 4.9 JIF), Journal of Counseling Psychology (ranking 9th, 3.9 JIF), and School Psychology (ranking 21st, 3.0 JIF, the journal’s highest rank and JIF to date; published on behalf of APA Division 16: School Psychology ).

Journal of Educational Psychology received a total of 21,442 citations, more than double those of the category’s number 1 journal.

• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (7.6 JIF) again earned the most all-time citations (90,177, or 20% of all citations) in the competitive Psychology, Social category and ranked 3rd of 65 journals, marking over a decade as one of the top 5 journals in this category.

Showcasing the breadth and depth of our program, journals published by APA are also highly ranked in 25 categories related to psychology found in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Science Citation Index Expanded. Some examples include the following:

• Humanities, Multidisciplinary : Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (3.6 JIF), published on behalf of APA Division 10: Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, is ranked number 1 out of the 146 journals in the Humanities, Multidisciplinary category. The journal is also ranked number 1 in this category on the basis of its JCI.
• Ethnic Studies : Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology (3.3 JIF), published on behalf of APA Division 45: Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race , retained its number 1 ranking out of the 20 journals in the growing Ethnic Studies category. We are proud to see this journal as the established go-to source for research on critical societal issues.
• Religion : Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (2.4 JIF), published on behalf of APA Division 36: Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality , is ranked 4th out of the 150 journals in Religion , a category in Clarivate’s Arts and Humanities Citation Index. The journal ranks 2nd in this category on the basis of its JCI.
• Social Work : American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (3.3 JIF), published on behalf of the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice , ranks 4th out of the 44 titles in the expanding Social Work category, the journal’s highest ranking to date (up from 6th in the previous year).
• Rehabilitation : Two APA journals indexed in the Rehabilitation category remain in the category’s top two quartiles: Rehabilitation Psychology (ranking 10th out of 73, 2.7 JIF) and Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal (ranking 35th, 1.9 JIF).
• Communication : Psychology of Popular Media (3.0 JIF) jumped in rank from 41st to 34th of the 96 journals in the Communication category, the journal’s highest ranking and JIF yet. It also jumped in rank in the Psychology, Multidisciplinary category, rising from 62nd to 51st out of 147 journals.
• Criminology & Penology : Psychological Violence (2.8 JIF) remains in the top quartile of the Criminology & Penology category, ranking 14th out of 69.
• Management : Journal of Applied Psychology (9.9 JIF) remains in the top quartile of the competitive Management category, ranking 26th out of 227 journals. The journal ranks 6th on the basis of its JCI and has the most all-time citations in the category (57,881, or 4% of the category’s citations).

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Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Citation Analysis

• Measuring Your Impact

Citation Analysis

Find your h-index.

• Other Metrics/ Altmetrics
• Journal Impact Factor (IF)
• Selecting Publication Venues

About Citation Analysis

What is Citation Analysis?

The process whereby the impact or "quality" of an article is assessed by counting the number of times other authors mention it in their work.

Citation analysis invovles counting the number of times an article is cited by other works to measure the impact of a publicaton or author.  The caviat however, there is no single citation analysis tools that collects all publications and their cited references.  For a thorough analysis of the impact of an author or a publication, one needs to look in multiple databases to find all possible cited references. A number of resources are available at UIC  that identify cited works including: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and other databases with limited citation data.

Citation Analysis - Why use it?

To find out how much impact a particular article or author has had, by showing which other authors cited the work within their own papers.  The H-Index is one specific method utilizing citation analysis to determine an individuals impact.

Web of Science

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It i ndexes over 10,000 journals in the arts, humanities,  sciences, and social sciences.

• Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT).  
• Select Author from the drop-down menu on the right.
• To ensure accuracy for popular names, enter Univ Illinois in the middle search box, then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.  (You might have to add the second search box by clicking "add another field" before you enter the address)
• Click on Search
• a list of publications by that author name will appear.   To the right of each citation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.   Click the number next to "times cited" to view the articles that have cited your article

Scopus provide citation counts for articles indexed within it (limited to article written in 1996 and after).   It indexes o ver 15,000 journals from over 4,000 international publishers across the disciplines.

• Once in Scopus, click on the Author search tab.
• Enter the name of the author in the search box.  If you are using initials for the first and/or middle name, be sure to enter periods after the initials (e.g. Smith J.T.). 
• To ensure accuracy if it is a popular name, you may enter University of Illinois in the affiliation field.  
• If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining). 
• Once you click on the author's profile, a list of the publications will appear and to the right of each ctation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.  
• Click the number to view the articles that have cited your article

 Dimensions (UIC does not subscribe but parts are free to use)

• Indexes over 28000 journals
• Does not display h-index in Dimensions but can calculate or if faculty, look in MyActivities
• Includes Altmetrics score
• Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides citation counts for articles found within Google Scholar.  Depending on the discipline and cited article, it may find more cited references than Web of Science or Scopus because overall, Google Scholar is indexing more journals and more publication types than other databases. Google Scholar is not specific about what is included in its tool but information is available on how Google obtains its content .   Limiting searches to only publications by a specific author name is complicated in Google Scholar.  Using Google Scholar Citations and creating your own profile will make it easy for you to create a list of publications included in Google Scholar.   Using your Google Scholar Citations account, you can see the citation counts for your publications and have GS calculate your h-index.  (You can also search Google Scholar by author name and the title of an article to retrieve citation information for a specific article.)

• Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar.  Follow the prompt on the scrren to set up your profile.   Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided.  Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.

Try Harzing's Publish or Perish Tool in order to more selectively examine published works by a specific author.

Databases containing limited citation counts:

• PubMed Central
• Science Direct
• SciFinder Scholar

About the H-index

The h-index is an index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output ( J.E. Hirsch )   The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist. The index is based on the set of the researcher's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other people's publications ( Wikipedia )  A scientist has index h if h of [his/her] Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have at most h citations each.

Find your h-index at:

Below are instructions for obtaining your h-index from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It indexes over 12,000 journals in the arts, humanities,  sciences, and social sciences.  To find an author's h-index in WOS:

• To ensure accuracy for popular names, add an additional search box and enter "Univ Illinois" and then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.
• Click on Citation Report on the right hand corner of the results page.  The H-index is on the right of the screen.
• If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining).  Under the Research section, you will see the h-index listed.
• If you have worked at more than one place, your name may appear twice with 2 separate h-index ratings.  Select the check box next to each relevent profile, and click show documents.

  Google Scholar

• Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar.  Follow the prompt on the screen to set up your profile.   Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided.  Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.
• See  Albert Einstein's
• Harzing’s Publish or Perish (POP) 
• Publish or Perish Searches Google Scholar.  After searching by your name, deselect from the list of articles retrieved those that you did not author.  Your h-index will appear at the top of the tool.  Note:This tool must be downloaded to use
• << Previous: Measuring Your Impact
• Next: Find Your H-Index >>
• Last Updated: Jun 14, 2024 1:10 PM
• URL: https://researchguides.uic.edu/if

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Journal Impact Factors

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According to Journal Citation Reports (JCR) , an  impact factor is a ratio focusing on original research. 

Impact factor = # of citations to all items published in that journal in the past two years (divided by) # of articles and reviews published over those past two years referencing those citations

For example, if a journal has an impact factor of 2.5, this means in the indexed year each article published was cited on average 2.5 times in the previous two years in that journal.

Impact factor is used for journals only.

JCR only includes  12,000 journals and conference proceedings from over 3,300 publishers.

• InCitesTM: Journal Citation Reports® This Web of Science hosted database is a citation-based research evaluation tool for journal performance metrics with the goal of offering a systematic and objective means to evaluate the journals based on citation data.
• Tips for Using JCR Tips for using the Web of Science InCitesTM Journal Citation Reports

Metrics on the Web

• Eigenfactor® Project
• Google Scholar - Metrics
• InCitesTM: Journal Citation Reports®
• PlumX Metrics

Research Guides 

• Impact Metrics and Scholarly Attribution (UCLA)
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Q. What is considered a good impact factor?

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Answered By: Laurissa Gann Last Updated: Jun 13, 2022     Views: 1096381

Impact Factors are used to measure the importance of a journal by calculating the number of times selected articles are cited within the last few years. The higher the impact factor, the more highly ranked the journal. It is one tool you can use to compare journals in a subject category.

During 2017, the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database tracked all impact factors for 12,298 journals. The table below shows the number and percentage of journals that were assigned impact factors ranging from 0 to 10+. Of 12,298 journals, only 239 titles, or 1.9% of the journals tracked by JCR, have a 2017 impact factor of 10 or higher. The top 5% of journals have impact factors approximately equal to or greater than 6 (610 journals or 4.9% of the journals tracked by JCR). Approximately two-thirds of the journals tracked by JCR have a 2017 impact factor equal to or greater than 1.

Impact Factors are useful, but they should not be the only consideration when judging quality. Not all journals are tracked in the JCR database and, as a result, do not have impact factors. New journals must wait until they have a record of citations before even being considered for inclusion. The scientific worth of an individual article has nothing to do with the impact factor of a journal.

Links & Files

• Recommended video: Insights from Nobel Laureates, for scientists everywhere: How important is a journal’s impact factor? By Peter Doherty
• What are the top-ranked open access journals for oncology?
• What are altmetrics and how do I look them up?
• How do I look up journals by impact factor?
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Comments (2)

• In 2016, the NEJM says their impact factor is 59. Is this possible? Do journals have IF that are greater than 30 today? ... Response from the MD Anderson Librarian... Yes, the NEJM has a 2015 impact factor of 59.558. There are 25 journals tracked by Journal Citation Reports that have an impact factor of 30 or higher. by Yvette Schlussel on May 22, 2017
• There is a journal with IF 2.88. Is this good or bad journal? The higher the Impact Factor, the better the journal. The 2.88 means that on average, any article published in that journal will be cited 2.88 times. You would have to compare this journal to journals in the same field to determine how it compares. by darshil trivedi on Dec 26, 2017

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Track your impact

Knowing and demonstrating your research's influence is invaluable when applying for funding, seeking a new position or working toward promotion. Promoting your research influence helps you get discovered and get noticed.

Measuring an article's impact

Determining the impact of published research is crucial for the betterment of society and also for funding and promotional opportunities.

Article-level metrics (ALMs) quantify the reach and influence of published research. ALMs seek to incorporate data from new sources, such as social media mentions, along with traditional measures (including citations) to present a richer picture of how an individual article is being discussed, shared and used. Measuring and reporting societal impact is an increasingly important aspect of getting funding and inspiring public confidence in research.

Four Scopus-specific metrics can be found on a document’s metrics details page: total number of citations by date range, citations per year for a range, citation benchmarking (percentile) and Field-weighted Citation Impact (FWCI). "Views count" is also available so you can understand usage at a glance.

PlumX Metrics

PlumX Metrics provide insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research, such as articles, conference proceedings, book chapters and more, in the online environment. These metrics are incorporated into Elsevier’s world-leading research products: Scopus ,  ScienceDirect  and  SSRN , as well as Elsevier’s leading journal and society partner sites.

We categorize metrics into five separate categories: citations, usage, captures, mentions and social media. Many journal homepages display the top 10 most popular articles according to PlumX social media metrics. More than 50 sources are included in PlumX Metrics.

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Get free metrics about an article, the number of citations and your h -index via Scopus Preview. Registered Scopus users also benefit from additional metrics about preprints, co-authors, topics and awarded grants as well as being able to see their own h -graph and citation tracker.

Discover the true impact of your research. Follow our easy-to-use, three-step Author Profile Wizard and update and verify your profile to ensure that your research and accomplishments are captured and displayed correctly in Scopus.

Journal-level metrics

Knowing where to publish your research is an important consideration. CiteScore metrics, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) and Journal Impact Factor are among the tools offered to help you assess the journals in your field.

Watch our short videos about research metrics

Metrics have become a fact of life in most fields of research and scholarship. They are used to evaluate the quality of a journal, as well as to determine the influence of your research in your field.

In this series of free modules, we walk you through some of the key players in metrics.

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Journal Metrics in Scopus

What is the impact factor, pros and cons of citescore and impact factor, alternatives to citescore and the impact factor, journal metrics comparison chart, article-level metrics.

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CiteScore : Metric in Scopus most closely related to Impact Factor. Citations received by all articles published in the last 4 complete years are divided by the number of articles published in the last 4 years.

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) : Measures the scholarly influence of a journal by accounting for the number of citations as well as the prestige of the citing journals. SJR is based on the  eigenvector centrality measure  used in network theory. It is a size-independent measure that ranks journals based on their average prestige per article. 

Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) : Measures the contextual citation impact of a journal by weighting the citations based on the total number of citations in a discipline. This method normalized for differences in citation practices between disciplines, so that a single citation is given greater value where citations are less frequent in that field. 

Scopus also provides metrics for number of citations, number of documents, percentage of documents cited, and CiteScore rank (how the CiteScore for the journal compares to other journals in the same field). Explore all the metrics by searching the Sources list in Scopus .

The Impact Factor  is a long-standing metric commonly used to evaluate journals . It is an equation calculating the average citation frequency for a given journal over a given period of time. It is a ratio of citations to citable items. Generally speaking, the higher the number, the higher the quality and prestige of the journal, although the impact factor is most useful when evaluating journals within the same discipline. 

A/B = Impact Factor A = cites by all indexed articles in a given year to articles published in a specific journal in the two preceding years. B = total number of articles published by that journal in that time period.

The journal Impact Factor was invented in the 1960s by Eugene Garfield and was intended as a tool to help librarians make selection decisions and authors identify publishing venues. Today, the Impact Factor is a proprietary calculation that is available only through Thompson Reuters Journal Citation Reports. 

• Vetted, established metrics for measuring journal impact within a discipline
• Designed to eliminate bias based on journal size and frequency
• Individual articles makes an uneven contribution to overall metric.
• These metrics do not account for certain things, things like context (positive or negative citation) and intentionality (self-citation).
• The metrics are proprietary to and bound by the contents of their respective databases: Scopus for CiteScore and the Thomson Reuters database for Impact Factor. 
• Citations, on which the Impact Factor is based, count for  < 1% of an article's overall use . 

Eigenfactor : A measure of a journal's overall importance to the scientific community based on the origin of incoming citations over a period of time; citations from highly ranked journals are weighed more heavily. (Hosted by the University of Washington; built on Thomson Reuters bibliographic data.)

• Eigenfactor Journal Ranking

Journal Metrics : Publicly accessible metrics for journal evaluation that offer three alternative views of true citation impact of a journal. (Provided by Elsevier; built on Scopus bibliographic data.)

• SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) : Defined above.
• Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) : Defined above.
• Impact per Paper (IPP) : Measures the ratio of citations to citable items for a given journal over a given period of time. IPP is the most direct correlate to the Impact Factor, but it calculates this ration over three years rather than two and it includes only peer-reviewed scholarly papers in both the numerator and the denominator. IPP is the foundational metric for the SNIP. 

Article-level metrics include:

• Citation count (Available through many databases and often on the publisher website.)
• Field-weighted citation impact (Calculated ratio in Scopus of the article's citations compared to the average number of citations received by all similar articles over a three-year window. A value greater than 1 means the article is cited greater than average.)
• Citation percentile (Scopus percentile comparing an article's citation count to the number of citations received by documents of the same type, published around the same time, in the same field.)
• View and/or download count (Number of times an article has been viewed and/or downloaded. Available in Scopus and often on the publisher website.)
• Altmetric score (Compilation of alternative metrics such as media mentions and citations in policy documents. Available through Altmetric Explorer for Institutions and on publisher websites which use Altmetric badges.)
• PlumX metrics  (Compilation of alternative metrics such as social media mentions and Mendeley readers. Available in Scopus and on publisher websites which use PlumX.)
• Article-Level Metrics: A SPARC Primer Guide to understanding the basics of Article-Level Metrics that explores the definition, application, opportunities and challenges presented by ALMs.
• More information on altmetrics available on this resource guide
• << Previous: Home
• Next: Altmetrics >>
• Last Updated: Jun 25, 2024 3:28 PM
• URL: https://libraryguides.umassmed.edu/research_impact

• The Oxford Review Encyclopaedia of Terms /

Impact factor

What is an impact factor?

The impact factor (IF) of a journal is a description of the influence the journal has in academic or university research circles. It is is a measure of how often the average research article in a journal has been cited or used in other research in any particular year.  The IF is used to measure the importance or rank of a journal by calculating the times it’s articles are cited. The higher the IF the more influential the journal.

Nature is the highest rated journal with an IF of 38.12

The Harvard Business Review has the lowest IF at 0.72

See also:  Harvard Business Review Impact factor

The Big difference between The Oxford Review and The Harvard Business Review

Back to The Oxford Review Encyclopaedia of Terms

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What is the impact of a research publication?

An increasing number of metrics are used to measure the impact of research papers. Despite being the most commonly used, the 2-year impact factor is limited by a lack of generalisability and comparability, in part due to substantial variation within and between fields. Similar limitations apply to metrics such as citations per paper. New approaches compare a paper's citation count to others in the research area, while others measure social and traditional media impact. However, none of these measures take into account an individual author's contribution to the paper or the number of authors, which we argue are key limitations. The UK's 2014 Research Exercise Framework included a detailed bibliometric analysis comparing 15 selected metrics to a ‘gold standard’ evaluation of almost 150 000 papers by expert panels. We outline the main correlations between the most highly regarded papers by the expert panel in the Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology and Neurology unit and these metrics, most of which were weak to moderate. The strongest correlation was with the SCImago Journal Rank, a variant of the journal impact factor, while the amount of Twitter activity showed no correlation. We suggest that an aggregate measure combining journal metrics, field-standardised citation data and alternative metrics, including weighting or colour-coding of individual papers to account for author contribution, could provide more clarity.

A number of developments in the metrics field have occurred in recent years, and, in this perspective article, we discuss whether they can inform how judgements are made about the impact of research papers in psychiatry and beyond.

The best-known approach has been to rely on journal impact factors, the most common of which is a 2-year impact factor, which calculates the average number of citations from articles published in the past 2 years of a particular journal. 1 Many arguments against journal impact factors have been outlined, including the skewed nature of citations in most journals, the variation between and within fields (with basic science attracting more citations) and research designs (with systematic reviews being relatively highly cited) and the citation lag time in some research fields being longer than 2 years. 2 A widely used alternative is the number of citations per paper, which can be drawn from research tools such as Scopus ( http://www.scopus.com ) and Google Scholar ( scholar.google.com ), with the latter including a broader range of citable items such as online reports and theses. The problem with citation counts is that they vary considerably by research area, and there have been recent attempts to account for this. One of these is the new iCite tool ( icite.od.nih.gov ) that normalises the number of citations of a particular paper to the median annual number of citations that NIH-funded papers in the field have received. 3 Finally, alternative metrics have been increasingly used and include tools such as Altmetric ( http://www.altmetric.com ), which aims to capture the media and social media interest in a publication, 4 and provides an overall article score and rankings compared with others in the same journal and/or time period.

A key problem with these approaches is that they do not account for an individual author's contribution to a paper, and therefore, high citation rates, h-indexes (for individuals) and iCite scores can be achieved for researchers who have not made significant contributions to a research area. The best example of this is being included as a coauthor of a large treatment trial or genetic consortium, where a researcher's contribution may be mostly in relation to participant recruitment. The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium workgroup for schizophrenia now average over 280 authors, although the number of authors varies considerably and is occasionally placed in the appendix. This highlights another problem with relying on measures of citation in that they do not account for the total number of authors. Accordingly, h-indexes should be routinely provided for papers where the author is first, corresponding or last author (and second author in psychology).

Another limitation is that some of these metrics are subject to measurement error, and some can be gamed. To take an example of the latter, Altmetric scores can potentially be artificially increased by robots that repost press releases. At the same time, they may not pick up all media activity if the article is not cited accurately or embedded in a hyperlink. In addition, they are considerably higher in studies on exercise, diet and lifestyle, and in areas that attract controversy. 5 Although some research has shown some correlation between alternative metrics and citations scores, 6 particularly early on after publication, they do not account for the inherent problems outlined above about the extent of an individual's contribution, normalisation by field and measurement error.

An important natural experiment has been undertaken in the UK where a very large sample of papers (k=148 755) was investigated against a gold standard of peer review as part of the 2014 Research Exercise Framework (or REF 2014). The REF was a national exercise undertaken to assess research from 2008 to 2013 in higher education institutions in the UK, which succeeded an earlier process (called the Research Assessment Exercise in 2008). It determined the extent of central government basic research funding for these institutions until the time of the next evaluation (thought to be in 2021). Three factors were considered—outputs (which made up 65% of the overall quality profile), impact (20%) and environment (15%). A detailed bibliometric analysis of the output data was published and provides a breakdown by unit of assessment. 7 Each eligible academic typically submitted four outputs for the REF. Here, we will discuss the assessment block that most departments of psychiatry and psychology will have entered, namely Unit 4 (Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology and Neurology), which assessed 9086 journal articles. The analysis took 15 different metrics for each paper and analysed to what extent, they were correlated with the final view of the REF panel (which was made up of an expert committee of 39 researchers). The strongest bivariate correlations between these metrics and scoring the highest score per paper are presented in figure 1 . Each paper was measured against a standard of originality, significance and rigour and the best papers were scored a 4*, which represented ‘world leading’, whereas a 3* reflected ‘internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour but which falls short of the highest standards of excellence’. Lower scores of 2*, 1* and unclassified were also given.

Strongest bivariate correlations between paper metrics and the highest REF score. *Source-Normalised Impact per Paper; †field-weighted citation impact; ‡Google Scholar citations.

The strongest correlation was with the SCImago Journal Rank, which is a metric based on the notion that not all citations have equivalent weight, and categorises journals per field into four categories (from low to high rank). It assumes that the subject field, quality and reputation of the journal have a direct effect on the value of a citation. This was followed by the absolute number of Scopus citations and the percentile of highly cited publications. The Source-Normalised Impact per Paper attempts to relativise the citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field. Thus, the impact of a single citation is given more value in participants where citations are less likely.

Notably, there was no correlation between Twitter activity generated by an article and a top REF score (of ‘4*’), and associations were weak for full-article requests, downloads and reads on one platform (Mendeley, http://www.mendeley.com ). Interestingly, for the overall REF which included 36 units, the 3 strongest markers of quality were the SCImago Journal Rank, the Source-Normalised Impact per Paper and the percentile. Correlations tended to be stronger in the sciences than in the arts and humanities.

What this suggests is that the judgement of an expert panel that was constituted to examine a paper's impact, perhaps the closest to a gold standard that is possible, was most strongly correlated with the SCImago Journal Rank, which itself is based mostly on the journal impact factor. This is not surprising as many such journals have more stringent peer and statistical review, insist on adhering to research guidelines, benefit from professional editors, and articles in high-impact journals are often cited to add legitimacy to a particular field of study, and may be included in introductions. Further, the analysis of the REF 2014 suggests that new metrics appear unlikely to replace simpler ones such as journal impact factor and number of citations per year.

So where does this leave someone trying to assess the impact of a paper? As there are difficulties with relying on one metric, we suggest that a combination of metrics should be used. We recommend that those most correlated with expert judgement take priority but can see a role for Altmetrics, with the caveats noted above, as a measure of wider public engagement, impact and interest. In the future, a combined score that takes into account journal impact factor, number of citations, iCite, Altmetric scores and a different colour coding or weighting for those papers where authors have made a substantial contribution (eg, where an author has been first/last/corresponding) would assist in providing some clarity.

Acknowledgments

SF and AW are funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Twitter: Follow Seena Fazel @seenafazel

Competing interests: None declared.

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

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The Crucial Role of Impact Factor in Choosing the Right Journal

In academic publishing, the impact factor of a journal serves as a crucial metric for authors, researchers, and institutions. This measure, often abbreviated as IF, is a reflection of a journal's influence and prestige within its field. Understanding what impact factor is, how it is calculated, and its significance can greatly aid in selecting the right journal for your manuscript.

What is Impact Factor?

Impact factor is a bibliometric indicator used to evaluate the importance and influence of a scientific journal. It is calculated based on the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the preceding two years. The formula for calculating the impact factor is:

For example, if Journal X published 50 articles in 2021 and 2022, and these articles received 200 citations in 2023, the impact factor for 2023 would be:

This means, on average, each article published in Journal X was cited four times.

Importance of Impact Factor

• Indicator of Quality and Prestige: High impact factor journals are often considered prestigious. They are usually more selective in their acceptance process, ensuring that only high-quality research is published. Publishing in such journals can enhance the reputation of the authors and increase the visibility of their work.
• Visibility and Reach: Journals with higher impact factors tend to have a broader readership. Articles published in these journals are more likely to be read and cited by other researchers, increasing the dissemination and impact of the published work.
• Academic and Professional Advancement: Publishing in high impact factor journals can be crucial for career advancement, particularly in academia. It is often a significant criterion in tenure decisions, grant applications, and professional evaluations.
• Reflects Research Influence: A higher impact factor indicates that the research published in the journal has been widely recognized and cited by the academic community, reflecting its influence and contribution to the field.

Limitations and Criticisms

While impact factor is a useful metric, it has its limitations and has been subject to criticism:

• Discipline Variability: Different academic fields have varying citation practices. For instance, journals in medicine or life sciences often have higher impact factors compared to those in the humanities or social sciences. Comparing impact factors across different disciplines can be misleading.
• Citation Manipulation: Some journals may engage in practices aimed at artificially boosting their impact factor, such as encouraging excessive self-citations or preferentially publishing review articles, which tend to garner more citations.
• Short-Term Focus: The two-year citation window may not adequately capture the long-term impact of research. Some significant studies might take several years to gain recognition and be cited.

Choosing the Right Journal

When choosing a journal for your manuscript, consider the following:

• Relevance and Scope: Ensure that the journal's scope aligns with the topic and objectives of your research. A journal that regularly publishes articles in your specific area of study is more likely to attract interested readers and citations.
• Target Audience: Consider the primary audience of the journal. Publishing in a journal that reaches the intended readership will enhance the visibility and impact of your research.
• Impact Factor and Beyond: While the impact factor is important, also consider other metrics and qualitative factors such as the journal's editorial board, peer review process, acceptance rate, and publication speed.
• Open Access Options: Open access journals can increase the accessibility of your work, potentially leading to higher citation rates. Evaluate the open access policies and fees associated with your chosen journal.
• Journal Reputation: Investigate the reputation and standing of the journal within the academic community. Peer recommendations and the journal's historical influence can provide valuable insights.

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Where do I find the Impact Factor of a journal?

The Impact Factor is a measure of scientific influence of scholarly journals. It measures the average number of citations received in a particular year by papers published in the journal during the two preceding years and is produced by a publisher called Thomson Reuters. The Impact Factor can be found on the Journal home page of journals that have an Impact Factor. 

Please note: Not all journals have an Impact Factor.

Follow these steps to find the Impact Factor of a journal:

• Search for a journal using the  ‘Journal/book title’  field on the ScienceDirect homepage or browse journal titles by selecting ' Journals & Books ' in the top right corner.
• Click the journal title to navigate to the journal’s home page.
• The Impact Factor and Journal CiteScore are mentioned in the header on the right side of the page.

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20 June 2024 2023 Impact Factors for MDPI Journals Released

MDPI is pleased to announce the inclusion of 237 journals in the 2024 release of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and share the key results (see above).

This year, journals covered in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) received category ranks together with journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). Overall, 139 MDPI journals indexed in ESCI are included in the new unified rankings for the first time.

Enhanced Comparability of Data

According to Clarivate, "the creation of unified category rankings [provides] a simpler and more complete category view for the evaluation of journal performance. [...] The category-first approach simplifies journal performance assessment with a holistic view of all journals in each subject category."

We are thrilled to announce that 72% of our ranked MDPI journals (171 of 237) are above average, in Q1 or Q2 . Twenty-nine of our journals received their first Impact Factor this year, accounting for more than 5% of the journals accepted into the Web of Science last year.

MDPI Journals Ranked in JCR

The following data includes all MDPI journals indexed in SCIE, SSCI, ESCI and AHCI.

Source: 2023 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports TM (Clarivate, 2024)

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Announces 2024 Journal Impact Factors from Clarivate

Brieflands announces 2024 JCR Impact Factors, showcasing its STM journals' commitment to high-quality research and scholarly communication in science and medicine.

Brieflands , a leading STM (Science, Technology, and Medicine) publisher, is pleased to announce the release of its 2024 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) Impact Factors from Clarivate . This announcement highlights the continued commitment of Brieflands journals to high-quality research and scholarly communication.

The Significance of Impact Factors

When you read or contribute to a journal, you want to know your time and effort are well invested. The Impact Factor is a quantitative measure that helps you make this judgment. It reflects the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years.

In other words, a higher Impact Factor usually signifies that the articles in a journal are being referenced more frequently by other researchers. This often implies that the published work is of high quality and is considered influential in the field.

However, the Impact Factor is not an all-encompassing metric. It is one of many tools to gauge the relevance and influence of a journal. It is important to consider other factors such as the scope, editorial board, and peer review process of a journal when assessing its overall quality.

The 2024 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) were released on June 20th, 2024, assigning new impact factors to 16 Brieflands journals.

Increased Coverage and Unified Rankings:

This year marks a significant development for Brieflands journals.   Clarivate's 2024 JCR release includes a broader range of Brieflands titles, with journals previously indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) now receiving category rankings alongside those in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). This unified approach provides a more comprehensive and streamlined evaluation system for the research community.

Strong Performance and Growth:

We are delighted to report that some of Briefland's ranked journals fall within the higher quartiles compared to the previous year. This achievement demonstrates the high caliber of research published in Brieflands journals and their impact within their respective fields.

Transparency and Accessibility:

Brieflands remains committed to providing researchers with transparent and accessible information about its journals. A complete list of Brieflands journals indexed in SCIE and ESCI is available on the publisher's website.

Looking Forward:

Brieflands is dedicated to supporting the advancement of scientific knowledge by providing a platform for high-quality research. We are confident that our continued focus on editorial excellence and author support will lead to even stronger performance for our journals in the years to come.  

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Home Publication New ERS Journal Impact Factors released

New ERS Journal Impact Factors released

20 June, 2024 

In the latest update of Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports , the ERS journals have updated Journal Impact Factors.

ERJ is ranked fourth in the respiratory system category, with an Impact Factor of 16.6.

The Impact Factor of ERJ Open Research is now 4.3, bringing it into the JIF quartile Q1 for the first time.

European Respiratory Review ’s Impact Factor has seen an increase to 9.0, and Breathe has also experienced an increase to 2.3.

ERS is grateful to all authors, reviewers and editors who continue to contribute to the success of the ERS’s publishing programme.

• Visit the ERJ website
• Visit the ERR website
• Visit the ERJ Open Research website
• Visit the Breathe website 
• Submit your work to ERS publications
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