The Impact Factor, a metric that the Institute for Scientific Information (now Thomson-Reuters) calculates for select journals based on numbers of recent citations to articles, is as important in modern academia as it is controversial. The Impact Factors of journals a researcher publishes in may be used, with varying degrees of weight, in decisions about promotions, tenure, green card applications and more. Critics argue that the metric can oversimplify the complexity of scholarly research and publishing and present a skewed view of what topics and journals are influential. ISI has recently provided some additions to Journal Citation Reports, the database used to find Impact Factors, to provide more information and context for the metric. New features allow the user to find a 5-year journal Impact Factor as well as the standard 2-year Impact Factor. The effects of self-citations can be seen by removing them from the calculation, and a box plot can be displayed indicating how a particular journal's Impact Factor stacks up against others in the same field. Also provided are Eigenfactor scores, a more complicated metric produced by researchers at the University of Washington. Go to Journal Citation Reports to see the new features, and take a look at some of the sources below if you're interested in learning more about the Impact Factor, the controversy, and other measures of scholarly influence.
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Pendlebury, DA. The use and misuse of journal metrics and other citation indicators. Arch. Immunol. Ther. Exp. 2009;75:1-11. (PMID 19219526)
Garfield, E. The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. JAMA. 2006;295:90-93.
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