1. Why you should not use the journal
impact factor to evaluate research
Helping you get published

2. Eugene Garfield,1 the founder of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF),
had originally designed it as a means to help choose journals.
Unfortunately, the JIF is now often used inappropriately, for
example, to evaluate the influence of individual pieces of research
or even the prestige of researchers. This metric has recently come
under considerable criticism owing to its inherent limitations and
misuse.2-4
Why you should not use the journal impact factor to evaluate research

3. The impact factor of a journal is a simple average obtained by
considering the number of citations that articles in the journal
have received within a specific time frame.5 A previous article,
“The impact factor and other measures of journal prestige”
touched upon its calculation and features. This article delves a
little deeper into the fallacies of the impact factor and points that
you should consider when using it.
Why you should not use the journal impact factor to evaluate research

4. Why you should not use the journal impact factor to evaluate research
How the JIF should be used
•As a measure of journal prestige and
impact
•To compare the influence of journals
within a specific subject area
•By librarians, to manage institutional
subscriptions
•By researchers, to identify prestigious
field-specific journals to follow and
possibly submit to
•By journals, to compare expected and
actual citation frequency and compare
themselves with other journals within
their field
•By publishers, to conduct market
research6
How the JIF should not be used
•To evaluate the impact of individual
articles and researchers
•To compare journals from different
disciplines
•By funding agencies, as a basis for grant
allocation
•By authors, as a singular criterion of
consideration for journal selection
•By hiring and promotion committees, as
a basis for predicting a researcher’s
standing
•By authors, to compare themselves
against their peers3,7

5. Characteristics of the JIF
Using citation analysis to measure research impact

6. Using citation analysis to measure research impact
1.To direct readers to an authentic source of relevant information
2.To help other researchers trace the genealogy of your ideas
3.To acknowledge pioneers and peers
4.To direct readers to previously used methods, and equipment
5.To criticize or correct previous work
6.To substantiate your claims and arguments with evidence
7.To show that you have considered various opinions in framing your arguments
8.To highlight the originality of your work in the context of previous work
9.To guide other researchers in their work
10.To build your credibility as an author
11.Finally, because not citing sources can amount to plagiarism4
11 reasons to cite previous work

7. Using citation analysis to measure research impact
Citation-based
metrics
Ranking journals
Ranking
researchers
Ranking articles
Ranking
universities and
countries
Citation analyses can be grouped according to some broad types based on who/what is
being evaluated.

8. What are the various citation-based metrics?
Ranking journals: Journals are ranked by counting the number of
times their papers are cited in other journals. Journal-level metrics
are generally meant to serve as an indicator of journal prestige.
The most well known of these is the journal impact factor, from
Journal Citation Reports®(a product of Thomson Reuters). The
journal impact factor is calculated as the average number of
citations all articles in a journal receive over a specific period of
time.5
Using citation analysis to measure research impact

9. What are the various citation-based metrics?
Ranking researchers: Various citation metrics are now used for this
purpose. Researchers are ranked by counting the number of times
their individual papers are cited in other published studies. These
metrics are also used to evaluate researchers for hiring, tenure,
and grant decisions. A researcher-level metric that is gaining
popularity is the h index,6 which is calculated by considering a
combination of the number of papers published by a researcher
and the number of citations these papers have received.
Using citation analysis to measure research impact

10. What are the various citation-based metrics?
Ranking articles: Article-level citation counts may provide an
accurate evaluation of the quality and impact of a specific piece of
work, regardless of the author. Unfortunately though, such metrics
are rarely considered because obtaining these data is tedious and
time-consuming.7
Using citation analysis to measure research impact

11. What are the various citation-based metrics?
Ranking universities and countries: There are databases that rank
universities and countries by considering their overall research
output through criteria such as citable documents, citations per
document, and total citations. These metrics help determine
which universities and countries have the most and/or best
scientific output. For example, Scimago Research Group
(http://www.scimago.es/ ) releases annual reports of institution-
and country-wise rankings.
Using citation analysis to measure research impact

12. How can citation analysis help you?
Researchers today are faced with increasing pressure to get
published. Academic departments are expected to meet specific
levels of publication output. Clearly, there is a lot at stake in the
assessment of research quality for both individuals and
institutions. Given this, governments, funding agencies, and
tenure and promotion committees are looking toward simple and
objective methods to assess increasing research volumes in the
least possible time. To this end, they are turning more and more to
citation analysis for objective parameters of impact assessment.
Using citation analysis to measure research impact

13. Using citation analysis to measure research impact
Citation analysis helps researchers to
•understand the reach of their research
•identify patterns in the way their work is used
•benchmark themselves against their peers
•lend credibility to their resumes when applying for
grants and promotions
•set objective targets for themselves and their
publications

14. Pitfalls of citation analysis
When using citation analysis, it is important to bear in mind some of its limitations3,7:
It overlooks the disparity in discipline-wise citation rates, that is, the fact that citation
patterns differ among disciplines and over time.
It ignores the fact that certain manuscript types such as letters and case reports offer
inadequate scope for citation and typically have short reference lists.
The sentiment of the citation is not considered; that is a negative citation (one used to
refute a prior claim) is given as much merit as a positive citation (one used to further the
claim being made). So even a paper that has been cited simply to discredit it can work to
the author’s advantage in citation analysis.
It does not account for author contribution on papers with multiple authors: such
citations are as meritorious as those to single-author papers. Citation analysis attributes
equal importance to all authors of a paper, regardless of their individual contribution.
Using citation analysis to measure research impact

15. Conclusion:-
Thus, sole reliance on citation data provides an incomplete understanding of research.
Although citation analysis may be simple to apply, it should be used with caution to avoid it
coming under disrepute through uncritical use.3 Ideally, citation analysis should be
performed to supplement, not replace, a robust system of expert review to determine the
actual quality and impact of published research.8
Using citation analysis to measure research impact

16. Using citation analysis to measure research impact
Bibliography
1.Dodson MV (2008). Research paper citation record keeping: It is not for wimps. Journal of Animal
Science, 86: 2795-2796.
2.Thomson Reuters. History of citation indexing. Essay in Free Scientific Resources.
[http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/history_of_citation_indexing/]
3.Smith L (1981). Citation analysis. Library Trends, 30: 83-106.
4.Garfield E. Citation indexing-Its Theory and Application in Science, Technology, and Humanities. New
York: Wiley, 1979.
5.Garfield E (2006). The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. The Journal of the American
Medical Association, 295: 90-93.
6.Hirsch JE (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences USA, 102: 16569-16573.
7.Neylon C and Wu S (2009). Article-level metrics and the evolution of scientific impact. PLoS Biology, 7:
1-6.
8.Moed HF (2007) The future of research evaluation rests with an intelligent combination of advanced
metrics and transparent peer review. Science and Public Policy, 34: 575-583.

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