Impact Factors and Journals
A feature of Academic/Scholastic journals is their Impact Factor (IF).
An impact factor can be used to rank journals against others publishing in the same subject field, research area or discipline.
An Impact Factor is;
- a statistical measure of a journal's influence on the global research community, based on the
average frequency of citation of published articles in a particular journal.
- "The journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years
have been cited in the JCR year.
The Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years. An Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited one time. An Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited two and a half times. Citing articles may be from the same journal; most citing articles are from different journals."
Many variables influence a journal's impact factor:
- changes in journal title, format or language.
- discredited or controversial articles can be highly cited.
Publishing in journals with a high impact factor may increase chances of funding by research bodies such as the ARC.