Impact Factor

What is the importance of impact factor and how does it impact the value of your research publication?

Once you look for a certain topic, it is quite easy to get lost in the world of science or any other field as there are many active research journals. In fact, there are millions of research papers published each year. This is where the journal impact factor comes into surface. It is a measure that shows us that how many times an average research paper from a certain journal has been cited during a year. The impact factor is an important indicator which determines the rank and the importance of the journal by the calculation of the frequency of its articles that have been cited. Hence, higher the impact factor, the higher a certain journal is ranked. It can be used as a tool if you want to compare journals in the similar subject category. By looking at its number, you immediately get a sense of where it stands in the pool of SCI journals. In most of the fields, the impact factor of 10 or greater is an excellent score but it is a subjective matter. For example, a journal in Physics with an impact factor 2 or 3 is normally considered excellent. On the other hand, experimental material sciences have a great number of journals rated over 10. Hence, you need to be mindful that different research areas have its own range of impact factor.

What matters here is the how a tool like impact factor has been used. Normally, librarians use it as a guide for a purchase decision. Publishers use it for marketing purposes most of the time. Majority of researchers or teams use it to maximize the research impact as well as to highlight the visibility of their research. As a result, the impact factor cannot be neglected but it alone will not give us the full picture about a certain journal. That is why scholars review journal metrics such as h- index, SJR (SCImago Journal rank), SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper), CiteScore metrics etc.

Even depending on your role as a researcher, you need to consider other factors such as review speed, the review process, editorial support, acceptance rate, publication fees as well.

Tip:

This video clip from Nobel Laureate Martin Chalfie explains the origin of impact factors and the problem with the way we use them.

?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCAsAKgNPjs