Research Quality and Newsworthiness of Published Articles are Partial Predictors of Journal Impact Factors

Objective – Determine what characteristics of a journal’s published articles can be used to predict the journal impact factor (JIF). Design – A retrospective cohort study. Setting – The researchers are located at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Subjects – The sample consisted of 1,267 clinical research articles from 103 evidence based and clinical journals which were published in 2005 and indexed in the McMaster University Premium LiteratUre Service (PLUS) database and those same journals’ JIF from 2007. Method – The articles were divided 60:40 into a derivation set (760 articles and 99 journals) and a validation set (507 articles and 88 journals). Ten variables which could influence JIF were developed and a multiple linear regression was run on the derivation set and then applied to the validation set. Main Results – The four variables found to be significant were the number of databases which indexed the journal, the number of authors, the quality of research, and the “newsworthiness” of the journal’s published articles. Conclusion – The quality of research and newsworthiness at time of publication of a journal’s articles can predict the journal impact factor with 60% accuracy.

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Research Counts, Not the Journal

10.31235/osf.io/497xr ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Miguel Abambres ◽

Tiago Ribeiro ◽

Ana Sousa ◽

Eva Olivia Leontien Lantsoght

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

Research Performance ◽

Research Quality ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Critical Overview ◽

Research Quality Assessment ◽

Journal Impact ◽

Better Than

‘If there is one thing every bibliometrician agrees, is that you should never use the journal impact factor (JIF) to evaluate research performance for an article or an individual – that is a mortal sin’. Few sentences could define so precisely the uses and misuses of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) better than Anthony van Raan’s. This manuscript presents a critical overview on the international use, by governments and institutions, of the JIF and/or journal indexing information for individual research quality assessment. Interviews given by Nobel Laureates speaking on this matter are partially illustrated in this work. Furthermore, the authors propose complementary and alternative versions of the journal impact factor, respectively named Complementary (CIF) and Timeless (TIF) Impact Factors, aiming to better assess the average quality of a journal – never of a paper or an author. The idea behind impact factors is not useless, it has just been misused.

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Research Counts, Not the Journal

10.31219/osf.io/4z39a ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Miguel Abambres ◽

Tiago Ribeiro ◽

Ana Sousa ◽

Eva Olivia Leontien Lantsoght

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

Research Performance ◽

Research Quality ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Critical Overview ◽

Research Quality Assessment ◽

Journal Impact ◽

Better Than

If there is one thing every bibliometrician agrees, is that you should never use the journal impact factor (JIF) to evaluate research performance for an article or an individual-that is a mortal sin'. Few sentences could define so precisely the uses and misuses of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) better than Anthony van Raan's. This manuscript presents a critical overview on the international use, by governments and institutions, of the JIF and/or journal indexing information for individual research quality assessment. Interviews given by Nobel Laureates speaking on this matter are partially illustrated in this work. Furthermore, the authors propose complementary and alternative versions of the journal impact factor, respectively named Complementary (CIF) and Timeless (TIF) Impact Factors, aiming to better assess the average quality of a journal-never of a paper or an author. The idea behind impact factors is not useless, it has just been misused.

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The Journal Impact Factor and its discontents: steps toward responsible metrics and better research assessment

Open Scholarship Initiative Proceedings ◽

10.13021/g89k55 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 1 ◽

Author(s):

J. Roberto F. Arruda ◽

Robin Champieux ◽

Colleen Cook ◽

Mary Ellen K. Davis ◽

Richard Gedye ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

San Francisco ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Research Assessment ◽

Sufficient Information ◽

Alternative System ◽

Practical Support ◽

Journal Impact

A small, self-selected discussion group was convened to consider issues surrounding impact factors at the first meeting of the Open Scholarship Initiative in Fairfax, Virginia, USA, in April 2016, and focused on the uses and misuses of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), with a particular focus on research assessment. The group’s report notes that the widespread use, or perceived use, of the JIF in research assessment processes lends the metric a degree of influence that is not justified on the basis of its validity for those purposes, and retards moves to open scholarship in a number of ways. The report concludes that indicators, including those based on citation counts, can be combined with peer review to inform research assessment, but that the JIF is not one of those indicators. It also concludes that there is already sufficient information about the shortcomings of the JIF, and that instead actions should be pursued to build broad momentum away from its use in research assessment. These actions include practical support for the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) by research funders, higher education institutions, national academies, publishers and learned societies. They also include the creation of an international “metrics lab” to explore the potential of new indicators, and the wide sharing of information on this topic among stakeholders. Finally, the report acknowledges that the JIF may continue to be used as one indicator of the quality of journals, and makes recommendations how this should be improved.OSI2016 Workshop Question: Impact FactorsTracking the metrics of a more open publishing world will be key to selling “open” and encouraging broader adoption of open solutions. Will more openness mean lower impact, though (for whatever reason—less visibility, less readability, less press, etc.)? Why or why not? Perhaps more fundamentally, how useful are impact factors anyway? What are they really tracking, and what do they mean? What are the pros and cons of our current reliance on these measures? Would faculty be satisfied with an alternative system as long as it is recognized as reflecting meaningfully on the quality of their scholarship? What might such an alternative system look like?

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Journal impact factor: A valid symbol of journal quality?

Tourism Economics ◽

10.1177/1354816619845590 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 26 (5) ◽

pp. 734-742

Author(s):

Rob Law ◽

Daniel Leung

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Citation Data ◽

Journal Quality ◽

Citation Frequency ◽

Journal Impact

As the citation frequency of a journal is a representation of how many people have read and acknowledged their works, academia generally shares the notion that impact factor and citation data signify the quality and importance of a journal to the discipline. Although this notion is well-entrenched, is it reasonable to deduce that a journal is not of good quality due to its lower impact factor? Do journal impact factors truly symbolize the quality of a journal? What must be noted when we interpret journal impact factors? This commentary article discusses these questions and their answers thoroughly.

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Metrics: Measuring importance

The Biochemist ◽

10.1042/bio03401038 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 34 (1) ◽

pp. 38-41

Author(s):

Caroline Black

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

Academic Literature ◽

Research Article ◽

The Impact ◽

Published Research ◽

Journal Impact ◽

Quality Of Research

Bibliometrics is the term used to describe various approaches to analysing measures of the use of academic literature, in particular articles in peer-reviewed journals. More broadly, the topic addresses the validity or otherwise of these measures as indicators of the impact, influence or value of the research being reported. These measures, and in particular the journal Impact Factor, are used as evidence for the quality of research, to make decisions about appointments, to judge a journal editor's success, and (it is assumed) to make funding decisions. Until recently, bibliometrics was mainly about citations, but now it is increasingly common to measure online usage, and even tweets, blogging and user star-ratings when assessing the contribution of a published research article.

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Analysis of the journal impact factor and related bibliometric indicators in education and educational research category

Education for Information ◽

10.3233/efi-200442 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-22

Author(s):

Metin Orbay ◽

Orhan Karamustafaoğlu ◽

Ruben Miranda

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Educational Research ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Bibliometric Indicators ◽

Strongly Correlated ◽

Starting Point ◽

Consistent Assessment ◽

The Impact ◽

Journal Impact

This study analyzes the journal impact factor and related bibliometric indicators in Education and Educational Research (E&ER) category, highlighting the main differences among journal quartiles, using Web of Science (Social Sciences Citation Index, SSCI) as the data source. High impact journals (Q1) publish only slightly more papers than expected, which is different to other areas. The papers published in Q1 journal have greater average citations and lower uncitedness rates compared to other quartiles, although the differences among quartiles are lower than in other areas. The impact factor is only weakly negative correlated (r=-0.184) with the journal self-citation but strongly correlated with the citedness of the median journal paper (r= 0.864). Although this strong correlation exists, the impact factor is still far to be the perfect indicator for expected citations of a paper due to the high skewness of the citations distribution. This skewness was moderately correlated with the citations received by the most cited paper of the journal (r= 0.649) and the number of papers published by the journal (r= 0.484), but no important differences by journal quartiles were observed. In the period 2013–2018, the average journal impact factor in the E&ER has increased largely from 0.908 to 1.638, which is justified by the field growth but also by the increase in international collaboration and the share of papers published in open access. Despite their inherent limitations, the use of impact factors and related indicators is a starting point for introducing the use of bibliometric tools for objective and consistent assessment of researcher.

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Impact Factors Workgroup Report

Open Scholarship Initiative Proceedings ◽

10.13021/g8osi.1.2017.1936 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 1 ◽

Author(s):

Susie Allard ◽

Ali Andalibi ◽

Patty Baskin ◽

Marilyn Billings ◽

Eric Brown ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Journal Impact

Following up on recommendations from OSI 2016, this team will dig deeper into the question of developing and recommending new tools to repair or replace the journal impact factor (and/or how it is used), and propose actions the OSI community can take between now and the next meeting. What’s needed? What change is realistic and how will we get there from here?

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Comparison of the Impact Factors of the Most-Cited Cardiovascular Journals

Circulation Research ◽

10.1161/circresaha.119.315249 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 124 (12) ◽

pp. 1718-1724 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Tobias Opthof

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

European Heart Journal ◽

The Other ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Additional Advantage ◽

The Right ◽

Number Of Classes ◽

The Impact ◽

Journal Impact

In this article, I show that the distribution of citations to papers published by the top 30 journals in the category Cardiac & Cardiovascular Systems of the Web of Science is extremely skewed. This skewness is to the right, which means that there is a long tail of papers that are cited much more frequently than the other papers of the same journal. The consequence is that there is a large difference between the mean and the median of the citation of the papers published by the journals. I further found that there are no differences between the citation distributions of the top 4 journals European Heart Journal , Circulation , Journal of the American College of Cardiology , and Circulation Research . Despite the fact that the journal impact factor (IF) varied between 23.425 for Eur Heart J and 15.211 for Circ Res with the other 2 journals in between, the median citation of their articles plus reviews (IF Median) was 10 for all 4 journals. Given the fact that their citation distributions were similar, it is obvious that an indicator (IF Median) that reflects this similarity must be superior to the classical journal impact factor, which may indicate a nonexisting difference. It is underscored that the IF Median is substantially lower than the journal impact factor for all 30 journals under consideration in this article. Finally, the IF Median has the additional advantage that there is no artificial ranking of 128 journals in the category but rather an attribution of journals to a limited number of classes with comparable impact.

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Evaluations as value-measurement links: Exploring metrics and meanings in science

Social Science Information ◽

10.1177/0539018419850771 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 58 (2) ◽

pp. 282-300

Author(s):

Felicitas Hesselmann ◽

Cornelia Schendzielorz

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

Building Blocks ◽

Theoretical Concept ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Value Measurement ◽

Journal Impact ◽

Insight Into

This contribution seeks to provide a more detailed insight into the entanglement of value and measurement. Drawing on insights from semiotics and a Bourdieusian perspective on language as an economy of linguistic exchange, we develop the theoretical concept of value-measurement links and distinguish three processes – operationalisation, nomination, and indetermination – as forms in which these links can be constructed. We illustrate these three processes using (e)valuation practices in science, particularly the journal impact factor, as an empirical object of investigation. As this example illustrates, measured values can function as building blocks for further measurements, and thus establish chains of evaluations, where it becomes more and more obscure which values the measurements actually express. We conclude that in the case of measured values such as impact factors, these chains are driven by the interplay between the interpretative openness of language and the seeming tendency of numbers to fixate meaning thus continually re-creating, transforming and modifying values.

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Five years post-DORA: promoting best practices for research assessment

Molecular Biology of the Cell ◽

10.1091/mbc.e17-08-0534 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (22) ◽

pp. 2941-2944 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Sandra L. Schmid

Keyword(s):

Best Practices ◽

Impact Factor ◽

San Francisco ◽

Journal Impact Factor ◽

Considerable Progress ◽

Research Assessment ◽

Surrogate Measure ◽

Journal Impact ◽

Design And Application

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) was penned 5 years ago to articulate best practices for how we communicate and judge our scientific contributions. In particular, it adamantly declared that Journal Impact Factor (JIF) should never be used as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research contributions, or for hiring, promotion, or funding decisions. Since then, a heightened awareness of the damaging practice of using JIFs as a proxy for the quality of individual papers, and to assess an individual’s or institution’s accomplishments has led to changes in policy and the design and application of best practices to more accurately assess the quality and impact of our research. Herein I summarize the considerable progress made and remaining challenges that must be met to ensure a fair and meritocratic approach to research assessment and the advancement of research.

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