When should a Journal be regarded to have a High Impact Factor? Should a journal with 3.0 and above impact factor be regarded as high impact factor?
It really depends on the scientific field you are working in. For any given field, if you were to rank the 50 journals that are the ones people in that field would publish in, then divide them into 4 quartiles from largest to smallest IF, the ones in the top quartile are the High IF journals for that field.
It all depends upon the field of study. Some research areas have high Impact Factors (eg many in the biomedical field) while others have very low values for IF (eg mathematical sciences).This is why Clarivate ranks journals against others in the same field, not all together. As an aside, journals have some freedom to 'game' their IF; they can for example exclude letters to the Editor etc as not counting as 'papers', but still include any citations to these letters.
Dear Sir Omolayo M. Ikumapayi ,
According to me Impact Factors are valuable, however they ought not be the main thought when making a decision about quality. Not all journals are followed in the JCR database and, subsequently, don't have affect factors. New journals must hold up until the point when they have a record of references before being considered for consideration. The logical worth of an individual article has nothing to do with the effect factor of a journal.
Thank You.
Thanks so much Dr. Karen Bayne , Dr. Patrick Moriarty and Dr. Piyush Kumar for your contributions
The indexing of the journal, readers, and field of study would affect its impact factor. Based on what scholars have said on here, I can add that a high impact journal in the medical field may not necessarily have a better reputation.
A journal of impact factor of 3.0 is relatively high, it can also be a good journal. note this, any journal that has good visibility will also grow fast in term of impact factor. Like journal index in Scopus, Web of science and other data base.
So much thanks to Dr. Pankaj Kumar , Dr. Ademolawa Michael Adedipe , Dr. Christopher J Graham , and Engr. Dr. Mrs. Imhade P. Okokpujie for your immense contributions.
Hi,
An impact factor of 3 is considered high in the social sciences, but not in the sciences. The medical sciences have especially high impact factor, of two digits. There is one medical journal that has an impact of over 100 (!). The humanities have generally around 0.5, and so forth, so it actually depends on the discipline.
It totally depends on the field to which the journal belongs. I recently saw a journal in medicine filed with an impact factor of 150. Similarly in social sciences we have an impact factor of 8.8 in the energy field. Finance and management journals are considered reasonable if IF is above 3, however in my opinion, a journal relevant to your filed with 1 IF is far better than a paper of high IF but not relevant to your field.
Don't worry. Getting included in Journal Citation Reports and having an impact factor are marks of quality and prestige for a journal. Definitely, a journal with JIF value of 3.0 is an upcoming one!
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