PUBLISHED JOURNALS

Is there a problem with the impact factor of published journals?

[Name of the Institute]Is there a problem with the impact factor of published journals?

Impact Factor

Counting references to rank scientific journals were proposed as early as 20 by Gross and Gross. Garfield in 1955 suggested that he could measure the impact of newspapers. In year 1960, Eugene Garfield founded in Philadelphia, a private company, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The impact factor was created by Eugene Garfield and Irving H. Sher: This tool would help them evaluate and select journals for coverage in significant "Current contents". The ISI then develops the bibliographic database Science Citation Index (SCI), with the objective to develop indicators measuring the "Consumption" of analytical results. It offers analysis of scientific articles taking into account the citations (Garfield, 2006).

The SCI is a multidisciplinary database containing 13 million references and citations recorded 150 million since 1964 from 4,500 periodicals science and technology covering all disciplines. Quotations are identified by the name of first author (only taken into account), year of publication and reference articles without the title. The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) broadcast each year these indicators. Original articles, editorial, "Letters to the Editor", "news" and meeting abstracts are reported as citations (cited). In contrast, only are considered as sources (Citing) items research or reviews and technical notes. One can also identify periodic "Citing" and "cities", the age of citations or the rate of self-citation (Garfield & Sher, 1963). However, the rate self-citation is strongly underestimated, since it takes into account only the first author self- city: most of the citations of a team by itself is not recognized as self-citation. The JCR has six sections and is used to rank the journals in different ways (Thompson, 2005).

The most cited in absolute

Those whose articles are most cited on average, globally or discipline

Those who publish the largest number of articles

The most "hot" (ranked by immediacy index)

Factor the best known and most used in the community science. It measures the frequency with which articles of a journal were cited for a period (2 years, 7 years and 15 years for cumulative). Example

Science FI (1996) = 23.600 FI (89-95) = 106.100 FI (81-95) = 70.800

Nature FI (1996) = 28.417 FI (89-95) = 99.100 FI (81-95) = 79.000

The impact factor is a statistical indicator for assessing the reputation of a journal. It is published by ISI (Information Science Institute) in ...