Related papers: Nefarious Numbers
Journal impact factor (IF) as a gauge of influence and impact of a particular journal comparing with other journals in the same area of research, reports the mean number of citations to the published articles in particular journal.…
Nowadays impact factor is the significant indicator for journal evaluation. In impact factor calculation is used number of all citations to journal, regardless of the prestige of cited journals, however, scientific units (paper, researcher,…
We show that as a consequence of basic properties of elementary arithmetic journal impact factors show a counterintuitive behaviour with respect to adding non-cited articles. Synchronous as well as diachronous journal impact factors are…
The ISI journal impact factor (JIF) is based on a sample that may represent half the whole-of-life citations to some journals, but a small fraction (<10%) of the citations accruing to other journals. This disproportionate sampling means…
The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is, by far, the most discussed bibliometric indicator. Since its introduction over 40 years ago, it has had enormous effects on the scientific ecosystem: transforming the publishing industry, shaping hiring…
Focusing specifically on physics periodicals, I show that the journal Impact Factor is not correlated with Hirsch's $h$-index. This implies that the Impact Factor is not a good measure of research quality or influence because the $h$-index…
Most scientometricians reject the use of the journal impact factor for assessing individual articles and their authors. The well-known San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment also strongly objects against this way of using the…
A review of Garfield's journal impact factor and its specific implementation as the Thomson Reuters Impact Factor reveals several weaknesses in this commonly-used indicator of journal standing. Key limitations include the mismatch between…
Purpose: Journal Impact Factors and other citation-based indicators are widely used and abused to help select journals to publish in or to estimate the value of a published article. Nevertheless, citation rates primarily reflect scholarly…
The impact factor (IF) of scientific journals has acquired a major role in the evaluations of the output of scholars, departments and whole institutions. Typically papers appearing in journals with large values of the IF receive a high…
The journal impact factor (JIF) is the average of the number of citations of the papers published in a journal, calculated according to a specific formula; it is extensively used for the evaluation of research and researchers. The method…
The Journal Impact Factor and other indicators that assess the average citation rate of articles in a journal are consulted by many academics and research evaluators, despite initiatives against overreliance on them. Despite this, there is…
The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) has been heavily criticized over decades. This opinion piece argues that the JIF should not be demonized. It still can be employed for research evaluation purposes by carefully considering the context and…
The journal impact factor (JIF) is often equated with journal quality and the quality of the peer review of the papers submitted to the journal. We examined the association between the content of peer review and JIF by analysing 10,000 peer…
Most researchers acknowledge an intrinsic hierarchy in the scholarly journals ('journal rank') that they submit their work to, and adjust not only their submission but also their reading strategies accordingly. On the other hand, much has…
We study the statistics of citations made to the indexed Science journals in the Journal Citation Reports during the period 2004-2013 using different measures. We consider different measures which quantify the impact of the journals. To our…
The proliferation of surveys and review articles in academic journals has impacted citation metrics like impact factor and h-index, skewing evaluations of journal and researcher quality. This work investigates the implications of this…
In recent years bibliometricians have paid increasing attention to research evaluation methodological problems, among these being the choice of the most appropriate indicators for evaluating quality of scientific publications, and thus for…
Since the publication of Robert K. Merton's theory of cumulative advantage in science (Matthew Effect), several empirical studies have tried to measure its presence at the level of papers, individual researchers, institutions or countries.…
A simple abstract model is developed as a parallel experimental basis for the aim of exploring the differences of journal impact factors, particularly between different disciplines. Our model endeavors to simulate the publication and…