The Impact of Ophthalmology

The impact factor: a useful indicator of journal quality or fatally flawed?

“…Within ophthalmology, optometry and vision science the impact factor appears to be a reasonable ball‐park assessment of the quality (or impact or usefulness) of a journal. Journals with an impact factor would generally be considered of higher quality than those without and there seems to be a reasonable sliding scale so that journals of impact factors within brackets of say 0–1, 1–2, 2–3, 3–4 and 4+ could be differentiated . However, I think most editors of these journals would agree that a 5‐year impact factor would be a more appropriate measure in our field, given the typical timeframe over which citations of important papers appear.…”

“…The Institute of Scientific Information (ISI)'s 2‐year impact factor is the principal measure by which research journals are evaluated and journal websites typically state their impact factor and ranking within their particular field. Obtaining an impact factor is seen as important and great importance is placed on positive changes in impact factor and the consequent ranking of journals within a field . Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics (OPO) currently has a 2012 2‐year impact factor of 1.74 and ranked 25th of the 59 journals included in the ISI ‘Ophthalmology’ section.…”

“…This is the highest impact factor the journal has gained to date and follows year‐on‐year increases, so this may seem an odd time to question it's validity. However, it is clear that the impact factor has several limitations . These are probably most extensively identified by Seglen and the main points are summarized below.…”