The Journal Impact Factor: Moving Toward an Alternative and Combined Scientometric Approach

Abstract

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a single citation metric, which is widely employed for ranking journals and choosing target journals, but is also misused as the proxy of the quality of individual articles and academic achievements of authors. This article analyzes Scopus-based publication activity on the JIF and overviews some of the numerous misuses of the JIF, global initiatives to overcome the ‘obsession’ with impact factors, and emerging strategies to revise the concept of the scholarly impact. The growing number of articles on the JIF, most of which are in English, reflects interest of experts in journal editing and scientometrics toward its uses, misuses, and options to overcome related problems. Solely displaying values of the JIFs on the journal websites is criticized by experts as these average metrics do not reflect skewness of citation distribution of individual articles. Emerging strategies suggest to complement the JIFs with citation plots and alternative metrics, reflecting uses of individual articles in terms of downloads and distribution of related information through social media and networking platforms. It is also proposed to revise the original formula of the JIF calculation and embrace the concept of the impact and importance of individual articles. The latter is largely dependent on ethical soundness of the journal instructions, proper editing and structuring of articles, efforts to promote related information through social media, and endorsements of professional societies.

Sharing New Knowledge: A Review of Dissemination Rates and Journal Emphasis in Career and Technical Education

“…In addition, it appears the current journals are representing different CTE audiences in the United States and internationally and are thus providing appropriate dissemination channels in the field. Finally, the results of this review also point to the possible use of consistency in dissemination rates over time as a potential alternative indicator of journal impact in a small academic field (Flanagan, 2013;Gasparyan et al, 2017). If so, the rate of dissemination over a given period of time can be used as an indicator of journal impact for the included journals.…”

“…The results of journal publication data also reaffirmed the collective role of publication outlets as contributors to the common goal of building a shared knowledge base in the field through reliable and steady rate of production. That is, in addition to clear identification of journal sources, information seeking relies heavily on the consistent availability of articles and a steady dissemination rate over time (Flanagan, 2013;Gasparyan et al, 2017). In a small field such as CTE, the rate of dissemination over a given period of time may yield a point of consideration comparable to an impact factor when assessing journal performance.…”

Comment on The 100 Most-Cited Articles Focused on Ultrasound Imaging: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…How often your article is cited cannot be predicted by the impact factor as also demonstrated by Moon et al in Table 2 [1]. Others have demonstrated that many articles are cited below the impact factor [6], and some articles are never cited [3].…”

“…Journals endorsed by a professional scientific society often attract more citations [6,7]. Ultraschall in der Medizin being the official journal of The European Federation of Societies in Medicine and Biology has grown to become the highest ranking interdisciplinary ultrasound journal and also from this perspective the study by Moon et al [1] is of particular interest for our journal and helps to attract attention to the field of ultrasound imaging.…”

Bibliometric Indices of Scientific Journals: Time to overcome the obsession and think beyond the Impact Factor

“…6 Having now realized the perils and pitfalls of JIF, there is an increasing understanding among academia of the need to develop and consider alternatives to the traditional JIF. 5,7 Therefore it is time now, for the scientific community to overcome an age-old obsession with the JIF, to fully understand the pros and cons of JIF and to be aware about various alternative and emerging bibliometric indicators.…”