The impact factor (IF) is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. It is used to measure the importance or rank of a journal by calculating the times it's articles are cited. Impact Factors are useful, but they should not be the only consideration when judging quality. Not all journals are tracked in the JCR database and, as a result, do not have impact factors. New journals must wait until they have a record of citations before even being considered for inclusion. The scientific worth of an individual article has nothing to do with the impact factor of a journal.

1. IMPACT FACTOR
SHRI MANGALAMBIKAI.P.R (2c6cd14)
Academic writing
SASTRA UNIVERSITY

2. Acknowledgement
• In preparation of my assignment, I had to take the help and
guidance of some respected persons, who deserve my
deepest gratitude. As the completion of this “Academic
writing” gave me much pleasure, I would like to show my
gratitude Dr Ajay semalty, Course coordinator, on HNB
Garhwal University for giving me a good guidelines for
assignment throughout numerous consultations. I would also
like to expand my gratitude to all those who have directly and
indirectly guided me in writing this assignment.

3. Objectives:
At the end of this talk, the participant will be able to:
1. Define Impact Factor (IF)
2. Explain how the impact factor relates to finding the "best"
journal in which to publish.
3. Find the impact factor of a journal using the LRC’s Electronic
Resources

4. The man who started it all!
Eugene Garfield

5. First mention of Impact Factor
• Garfield recommends keeping track of who cited the paper.
“In effect, the system would provide a complete listing, for the
publications covered, of all the original articles that had referred
to the article in question.” … Such an “impact factor” may be
much more indicative than an absolute count of a scientist's
publications.”
• Here impact factor refers to the impact of the article.

6. Impact Factors for Journals
• In the early 1960’s Irving H. Sher and Eugene Garfield created
the Journal Impact Factor to help select journals for Science
Citation Index (SCI).
• They knew that a core group of highly cited large journals
needed to be covered in SCI, but they also wanted to include
the small, but important review journals which would not be
included if they relied only on publication or citation counts.
• Created the Journal Impact Factor

7. Journal Impact Factor
Formula
The number of times articles published in (2 years) were cited
by indexed journals
Total number of citable items (2 years)

8. In Simpler Terms
The impact factor is a measure
reflecting the average number of
citations to articles published in
science and social science
journals.

9. Other Methods
• Eigenfactor
• H Index (or H factor)
• Immediacy index

10. Eigenfactor
• Developed by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom at the University
of Washington,
• Journals are rated according to the number of incoming
citations, with citations from highly-ranked journals weighted
to make a larger contribution to the Eigenfactor than those
from poorly-ranked journals.
• Eigenfactor score scales with the size of a journal.
• To allow per-article comparisons using the Eigenfactor
approach, the Article Influence score scales Eigenfactor score
by the number of articles published by the journal and thus is
directly comparable to impact factor.

11. H Factor or H Index
Index that attempts to measure both the productivity and
impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar.
A scholar with an index of h has published h papers each of
which has been cited by others at least h times.
Serves as an alternative to more traditional journal impact factor
metrics in the evaluation of the impact of the work of a
particular researcher

12. Immediacy index
Measure of topicality and urgency of a scientific journal
Number of times articles published in year x were cited in
indexed journals during same year.
Number of articles, reviews, proceedings or notes published in
year x

13. Limitations of the Impact Factor
• Self-citations
• Many times editors insist that authors cite works in that
journal
• Some disciplines tend to cite more than others
• Journals change their names thus affecting impact factor for
approximately two years
• Does not take into account negative citations

14. How do I find a journal impact
factor?
• Use the LRC’s Electronic Resources to go to Web of Science
• Click on Additional Resources to find Journal Citation Reports

15. Journal Citation Reports
JCR
• JCR distills citation trend data for 10,000+ journals from more
than 25 million cited references indexed by Thomson Reuters
every year
• Science Edition and Social Sciences Edition released annually
• Science Edition covers 7,200+ journals in 171 subject
categories
• Social Sciences Edition covers 2,100+ journals in 55 subject
categories

16. Using JCR Wisely
You should not depend solely on citation data in your journal
evaluations. Citation data are not meant to replace informed peer
review. Careful attention should be paid to the many conditions that
can influence citation rates such as language, journal history and
format, publication schedule, and subject specialty.
The number of articles given for journals listed in JCR include primarily
original research and review articles. Editorials, letters, news items,
and meeting abstracts are usually not included in article counts
because they are not generally cited. Journals published in non-English
languages or using non-Roman alphabets may be less accessible to
researchers worldwide, which can influence their citation patterns.
This should be taken into account in any comparative journal citation
analysis.

17. FEEDBACK
• First of all I thank my university to access swayam and learn in
it. Thank you swayam member, It was very useful for PG for
my project. When ever I find time I can visit swayam website
to study. I m so interested to study other subjects that
available in swayam website. Members have their notes and
presented video. It was very for me to learn. And for myself
video help me to learn quick and easy.
Thank you all…..