Some the how the answer is yes. But impact factor, h index, categories, and cite score are the parameters which indicate best journals.

Dear Prof. Ullah, I agree, a single factor should not determine the quality of a journal. Unfortunately, factors/indices go to backseat when it comes to comparison with impact factor. Isn't it?

Hello,

The impact factor is the only way for researchers to evaluate a journal.

Regards

The founder of Journal Impact Factor (JIF) - E. Garfield once mentioned that even he was not sure about whether JIF could reflect the 'Quality' of a publication. In my view, this is completely true since we have no perfect idea about what we mean by 'Quality'. This property is a very subjective notion and depends on the way we look at it. For example, the quality you expect from a journal could be completely differ from the quality I expect from the same journal. To clarify further, I may define the significance of the problem, its originality, sound methodologies, significant results and conclusions as some quality aspects of a publication or publication outlet. But the same valid to you? There could be more or less conditions for someone else. Therefore, can we judge something universally without knowing what exactly we need to judge? This is my first concern regarding your question. Second, JIF usually depends on the number of citations a publication/outlet received. People could cite a research due to numerous reasons. What if I need to support one of the ideas in my paper while I can find only one previous publication that support the idea? Don't I tend to cite the only available article despite where it was published? To be honest, I still do not understand what exactly 'Citations' reflect. It is not COMPLETELY significance, neither impact, not even technical soundness of methods, not excellent writing, or something else. It could be one or more of these (or even something else) and depends on the situation where it needs to be cited.

Next, I do not understand why did you say that JIF varies widely among different systems. Do you meant among different subjects/disciplines? If so, it is correct since different subjects have different publication cultures. The growth rates of different subjects differ from one to another, so as the citation patterns.

Finally, JIF is not an article level metric. Technically you cannot determine an article based on JIF since it is a journal level metric. JIF is not the only available criteria to determine a journal. There are many more, in my view. Some empherical evidence shows that the status of peer-review has more influence on journal selection than JIF. Don' you consider the scope of a journal before looking for its JIF? Some people even worry about the readership of a journal, because this factor is likely to influence the number of citations. Good reviews received from a journal can also be useful to judge a journal. So there are many more determinents.

Dear Prof. Wijewickrema, thanks for your comment. Various tools have been used to determine impact factor. Those generate different ways of evaluation.

https://researchguides.uic.edu/if/impact

Impact factor correctly judge a journal is a measure of the quality of the journal when we consider a common platform.