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How can impact factors be improved?

¹Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu

BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.)

|August 17, 1996

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

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Journal impact factors are common but can be misused. Long-term data show impact reflects a journal's success in publishing top research papers.

Area of Science:

Bibliometrics
Scholarly Communication
Journal Evaluation

Background:

Journal impact factors are widely utilized for ranking and evaluating scientific journals.
Concerns exist regarding the inappropriate use of impact factors as surrogates in academic evaluations.
The inventor of the Science Citation Index has cautioned against the indiscriminate application of these metrics.

Purpose of the Study:

To provide a quantitative assessment of the long-term influence of leading medical journals.
To analyze cumulative impact data over a 14-year period.
To offer a nuanced perspective on the meaning and utility of journal impact factors.

Main Methods:

Analysis of 14-year cumulative impact data.
Focus on 10 leading medical journals.

Related Experiment Videos

Quantitative bibliometric analysis.

Main Results:

Cumulative impact data over 14 years offer a more stable indicator of journal influence than single-year metrics.
Leading medical journals demonstrate sustained influence over time.
Journal impact is fundamentally tied to the quality and significance of the research published.

Conclusions:

While impact factors are useful, their limitations must be acknowledged.
Long-term impact data provide a more robust measure of journal influence.
Ultimately, a journal's true impact is determined by its success in attracting and publishing high-quality scientific contributions.