Publishing Your Research: Journal Impact Factor

The journal impact factor is a measure of the average number of times an article in a journal is cited during any given year. It is calculated and reported annually by the Journal Citation Reports (JCR).  The journal impact factor is not designed to be a determinant of journal quality.

To calculate the 2022 impact factor for Journal X:

  Number of items published in Journal X in 2020 = 45
+Number of items published in Journal X in 2021 = 42

Total Items Published in Journal X in 2020 & 2021 = 87

  Citations in 2022 of 2020 items = 37
+Citations in 2022 of 2021 items = 66

Total citations in 2022 of 2020 and 2021 items = 103

Total Number of Citations (103) / Total Number of Items Published (87)

103/87 = 1.18 = Journal X's 2022 Journal Impact Factor

Journal impact factor (JFI) may be one aspect to consider when determining where to publish, but authors should use several criteria other than JFI when selecting journals for their submissions.

Journal impact factor may be used to evaluate the importance of a particular journal to its field of research.

• Narrow research fields have low impact factors
• Journals in rapidly changing or expanding fields have higher JIFs 
• Review articles are heavily cited and inflate JIF
• Long articles are cited more and increase JIF
• Editorials, letters, and news items are not counted in article total but if cited are counted as citations for the journal
• Clinical journals are less frequently cited
• Self-citations are not corrected for
• Articles tend to preferentially cite other articles in the same journal
• Not all journals are included and those that are included can change from year to year
• JCR is biased toward English and is dominated by American publications

Sources: Seglen P. O. (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 314(7079), 498–502. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.314.7079.497.

Scholarly Impact and Citation Analysis, Wooster Campus Research Library, Ohio State University, https://osu.libguides.com/c.php?g=110226&p=714742

Journal Impact Factors, listed in Journal Citation Reports, are released annually by Clarivate.

Journal Citation Reports is located on the MWU Library Database search tab.

Author impact looks at direct citations for an author or group of authors. H-index is based on a list of a researcher's publications ranked in descending order by time cited. The value of h is equal to the number of papers (N) in the list that have N or more citations.

For example, an h-index of 10 means that the author has published at least 10 articles that have each been cited at least 10 times.  If the author's 11th most cited publication was cited only 5 times, the h-index would remain at 10.  If the author's 11th most cited publication was cited 11 or more times, the h-index would rise to 11.