Demystifying the Impact Factor (IF): A Guide for Researchers and Academics
In the realm of academic publishing, navigating the intricacies of journals and their significance can be a daunting task. One metric frequently employed to assess a journal’s prominence is the Impact Factor (IF). This article delves into the concept of the IF, exploring its meaning, calculation, strengths, limitations, and alternative metrics.
Understanding the Essence: What is the Impact Factor?
The Impact Factor serves as a quantitative measure of the average number of citations received by articles published in a particular journal during a specific two-year period. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the current year to articles published in the two preceding years. For instance, a journal with an IF of 5 indicates that, on average, articles published in that journal within the past two years have been cited five times in scholarly publications during the current year.
The Calculation Process: Unveiling the Formula
The Impact Factor is calculated using the following formula:
IF(2024) = Citations in 2024 to articles published in 2022 & 2023 / Number of articles published in 2022 & 2023
This formula is applied annually by Clarivate Analytics, a leading provider of scientific information and citation data, through their Web of Science platform. It’s crucial to remember that the IF is a journal-level metric, reflecting the average citation impact of articles published within that specific journal, not the impact of individual articles.
The Merits of the Impact Factor: A Look at the Advantages
The Impact Factor offers several advantages:
- Provides a Benchmark for Journal Prestige: A higher IF generally signifies a journal’s greater prominence and influence within its field. This can be a valuable consideration for researchers seeking to publish their work in high-impact journals, potentially enhancing the visibility and reach of their research.
- Facilitates Journal Selection: Researchers can leverage the IF as a starting point when selecting journals for submission, helping them target publications with a strong reputation within their specific research area.
- Aids in Research Evaluation: Institutions and funding agencies might utilize the IF to assess the quality of research outputs, particularly when evaluating the publication record of researchers.
Beyond the Glimmer: Recognizing the Limitations
While the Impact Factor holds some value, it’s essential to acknowledge its limitations:
- Field-Specific Variations: The IF can be misleading when comparing journals across different disciplines. Journals in some fields naturally receive higher citation counts compared to others. A social science journal with an IF of 3 might be equally prestigious as a physics journal with an IF of 5.
- Focus on Quantity over Quality: The IF solely considers the number of citations, not the quality or significance of those citations. A highly cited article might be cited for various reasons, including agreement or disagreement with the findings.
- Potential for Manipulation: Unethical practices, such as self-citation or citation cartels, can artificially inflate a journal’s IF.
- Limited Scope: The IF only considers citations from a specific database (Web of Science) and excludes valuable citations from other sources.
Alternative Metrics: Exploring Broader Evaluation Techniques
Given the limitations of the IF, researchers and institutions are increasingly exploring alternative metrics to assess journal impact and research quality. These include:
- Altmetrics: This refers to a broader range of metrics that capture the online attention and discussion surrounding research outputs, such as social media mentions, downloads, and altmetrics scores.
- Eigenfactor Score: This metric considers the importance of the citing journals, providing a more nuanced picture of a journal’s influence.
- Citation Rate by Field: This metric normalizes citation counts based on the average citation rate within a specific field, addressing the issue of field-specific variations.
A Balanced Approach: Utilizing the IF Effectively
The Impact Factor should not be the sole criterion for evaluating journals or research. Researchers are encouraged to consider the IF in conjunction with other factors, such as:
- Journal’s reputation and editorial board: A journal’s editorial board composition and its reputation within the field can offer valuable insights into its quality and relevance.
- Target audience: Consider the intended audience for your research and select a journal with a readership that aligns with your field and research questions.
- Article fit: Ensure your research aligns with the journal’s scope and editorial focus to maximize the likelihood of acceptance and impact.
- Open access options: Explore the open access options available through the journal, considering the importance of making your research readily accessible to a wider audience.
Conclusion: A Compass, Not a Destination
The Impact Factor serves as a guidepost, not a definitive measure of journal quality or research significance.
Thomson Reuters Company is a multipurpose company, one of which is scientific activities. It releases a list of journals which identified as qualified journals worldwide, every year. The journals which are included in this list are called ISI journals.
ISI stands for “Institute for Scientific Information”
The other activity of Thomson Company was calculating the Impact Factor (IF) of ISI journals. IF is calculated by dividing “the number of papers referenced to the journal, during the last two years” into “the total number of journals published by the journal, during the last two years”. The higher IF, the more quality of a journal.
This report that is containing IF of journals is called JCR which stands for “Journal Citation Reports”.
Now, JCR is the property of Clarivate Analytics and is integrated with The web of science – which previously was a property of Thomson company –
What is considered a good impact factor?
There is not a definite range for IF; as it was said, the higher IF, the more quality of a journal.
In order to compare different journals in terms of IF, they should be of the same scope, for example, you cannot compare the IF of a medical journal with an engineering journal.
How to find the impact factor of a journal?
Most of the journals write their IF in their websites, however, it cannot be a reliable source to refer.
Clarivate website is the most reliable source. Visit this website and insert the full title of the journal, a word in the title, or an ISSN of it. A list will be appeared. If the journal you are searching for exists in the list, it is an ISI journal, otherwise, it is not. The problem is that the appeared list does not contain the IF of the journals.
There are also other websites publishing the IF list for journals. for example, you can see the IF list for 2017 in this PDF.
Considering the IF formula, JCR publishes the list of every year for the previous year. So in 2019, the list of 2018 will be published.
Criticism of impact factor
Remember the IF formula? It is the average of citations a journal has got during the past two years. Considering this fact, the IF is under some criticisms.
For example, naturally open access journals will get more citations, since the access to them is possible to every researcher easily.
Or in some fields the number of citations is more than others. So you cannot compare the IF of two journals in two different fields.
Besides, it causes editors to accept those papers that have more chance of getting citations.
What is the impact factor used for?
IF is using in two cases:
- When you are writing a research paper; if you want to write a high-quality paper, you need to use papers published in journals with higher IF to reference to.
- When you are going to publish your research paper in a journal, you can evaluate the quality of journals by their IF and choose which journal you are going to publish in.
What other metrics are there assessing the quality of a journal?
There are other metrics such as “Global Impact Factor” or GIF, “Universal Impact Factor” or UIF, “Scientific Journal Impact Factor” or SJIF, “Google Scholar metrics”, and so on which are calculated by publishers or other companies.
Note that the only reliable metrics to assess a journal in terms of academic value are JCR and SJR -which is calculated by Scopus and is of a range between Q1 to Q4- however, there are some criticisms of them as well.
