This lecture gives you all you need to know about impact factor in scientific publishing. What is it, how to calculate it, and how to use it.

2. FOREWORD
But in science the credit goes to
the man who convinces the world,
not to the man to whom the idea
first occurs.
Sir Francis Darwin

3. JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR - (THOMSON REUTERS)
Developed in the 60’s
 Eugene Garfield and Irving Sher
 To help select journals for the
SCI
Journal Citation Reports first
produced in 1975

4. JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS
The JCR provides quantitative tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and
comparing journals (Thomson Reuters)
The Impact Factor is one of these tools
Derived using citation data in the Science Citation Index and the Social Science
Citation Index
Helps determine a publication’s impact and influence in the global research
community (Thomson Reuters)
Widely accepted and used

5. THE IMPACT FACTOR
Journal Z IF 2011=
All citations from Thomsons Reuters journals in 2011 to papers in journal Z
Number of citable articles published in journal Z in 2009 & 2010

6. THE IMPACT FACTORIntroduced in 1960’s by Eugene Garfield: ISI
2009 and 20102011
IF=5
Articles published in 2009-2010
were cited an average of 5 times in 2011.
citations articles

7. HOW THE JIF SHOULD BE USED
Wisely!
Thomson doesn’t depend on it alone to assess the usefulness of
journals so neither should anyone else
It should be used with ‘informed peer review’ (lots of things
influence citation rates)

8. THREE PROBLEMS
Negotiable
Irreproducible
Not mathematically sound

9. NEGOTIABLE
PLoS Medicine, IF 2-11 (8.4)
Current Biology IF from 7 to 11 in 2003
 Bought by Cell press in 2001

10. NOT REPRODUCIBLE
Rockefeller University Press buys their data from TR
Up to 19% deviation from published records
Second dataset still not correct

11. NOT MATHEMATICALLY SOUND
Left-skewed distributions
Weak correlation of individual article citation rate with journal IF

12. HOW IS ‘IMPACT’ MEASURED?
“My article was published
in a journal with
an Impact Factor of 3.751”
What the …?

13. SO, HOW COULD ‘IMPACT’ BE MEASURED?
Where the work is published
 JournalRank
Citations
 scholarly, hyperlinks, social bookmarks
Web usage
 Publisher platform; 3rd party locations
Expert ratings
 F1000; Peer Reviewers; Ed Boards etc
Community rating & commenting
 Digging; Commenting; Rating etc

14. SO, HOW COULD ‘IMPACT’ BE MEASURED?
Media/blog coverage
 Which sources are considered the most important?
Policy development?
Who published it?
 And where do they work? What did they publish before? How ‘impactful’ are they?
Who is talking about it?
 And what authority do they have?
Who is citing it ?
 And what authority do they have?

15. "NOT EVERYTHING
THAT CAN BE COUNTED COUNTS,
AND NOT EVERYTHING
THAT COUNTS CAN BE COUNTED."
Albert Einstein

16. SOME SUGGESTIONS

17. WHAT IS A GOOD SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE?
Novelty Communication

18. DISTILLATION
Before writing
‘distillate’ your results
to keep only 2-3 trends
that show an advance
versus existing
knowledge.

19. NOVELTY
How to select the new result?
Think of:
• Initial hypothesis
• Hypothesis reformulation
• Lab seminar
• Meeting poster, oral
• Scientists outside your field
• Coffee breaks and friends

20. CLEAR
If you can’t explain something
simply, you don’t understand it
well.
Albert Einstein
• Do not make science ‘secret’
• Do not use complicated words
to look ‘serious’
• Editors hate abbreviations

21. IMAGES
Draw images
showing imagination
Images communicate
100 times better
than text

22. SOCIAL MEDIA
Share your
findings…
And get cited

23. CONCLUSIONS
No single ‘perfect’ JIF
Objective tools have a role and can contribute to the evaluation of research quality
when used appropriately – must be aware of their limitations!
More data sources available to rank journals
Complementary metrics (usage) should be used and studied further
Evaluation: expert peer review complemented by appropriate journal ranking data
Ongoing debate….