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Impact Factor and How To Calculate It?

The impact factor of a journal is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the current year to articles published in the journal during the previous two years, divided by the total number of articles published during those two years. It is used to measure the frequency at which the average article in a journal is cited in a particular year. Impact factors can be used by authors to select where to publish, libraries for collection development, and academic departments for assessing productivity and promotion decisions. However, impact factors have limitations and do not accurately reflect the quality of individual articles, as citations are not evenly distributed, review articles inflate scores, and clinical and social science journals tend to have lower scores.

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209 views2 pages

Impact Factor and How To Calculate It?

The impact factor of a journal is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the current year to articles published in the journal during the previous two years, divided by the total number of articles published during those two years. It is used to measure the frequency at which the average article in a journal is cited in a particular year. Impact factors can be used by authors to select where to publish, libraries for collection development, and academic departments for assessing productivity and promotion decisions. However, impact factors have limitations and do not accurately reflect the quality of individual articles, as citations are not evenly distributed, review articles inflate scores, and clinical and social science journals tend to have lower scores.

Uploaded by

Rahul Senchuri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Impact factor and the ways to calculate it?

A journal impact factor may be a measure of the frequency with which the typical article
during a journal has been cited during a particular year.

Impact factors could also be used by:

• Authors to make a decision where to submit a piece of writing for publication.


• Libraries to form collection development decisions
• Academic departments to assess academic productivity
• Academic departments to form decisions on promotion and tenure.

How to calculate impact factor?

The impact factor of a journal is calculated by dividing the amount of current year citations
to the source items published therein journal during the previous two years. it's denoted as a
ratio between citations and up to date citable items published.
i.e.

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

Factors to think about While Consulting Impact Factors:

1. Publication Date:

The impact factor is predicated on citation frequency of articles from a journal in their first
few years of publication. This doesn't serve the journals with articles that get cited over a
extended period of your time (let's say, 10 years) instead of immediately. In other words,
journals in rapidly expanding fields like cell biology and computing tend to possess much
higher immediate citation rates resulting in higher IFs than journals in fields like Education
or Economics.
2. Journal Impact Factor not Article Impact Factor:

Citations to articles during a journal aren't evenly distributed. In fact, some articles during a
journal might not be cited in the least but a couple of highly cited articles could lead on to a
high IF. Therefore, the IF doesn't accurately reflect the standard of individual articles
published during a journal. Also, journals with more issues and articles can have higher
Impact Factors which might be misleading because it doesn't really reflect the standard of
articles.

3. Review Articles:

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

4. Clinical Journals:

Clinical journals usually have low citation counts. This puts such journals at an obstacle
with research journals within the field that have higher citation counts.

5. Uneven Coverage:

The Journal Citation Reports focuses far more on disciplines where the first means of
publishing is thru 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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