Thats an interesting question. There is more and more, good quality open literature from journals with no IF, but as there is always a but, the IF is also many time used as a parametre to "judge" the quality of the research = grant = Money$$$$ so we are turning in a loop! I would love to hear from an editor.

Interesting, just got this article in my mail box 10min ago, worth the read:

"The mismeasure​ment of science" Current Biology, 2008. vol17, N15, p383-385 by Peter A Lawrence

It is a worth reading article... i agree with you...

Answer from the hero in Leo Szilard’s 1948 story “The Mark Gable Foundation” when asked by a wealthy entrepreneur who believes that science has progressed too quickly, what he should do to retard this progress: “You could set up a foundation with an annual endowment of thirty million dollars. Research workers in need of funds could apply for grants, if they could make a convincing case. Have ten committees, each composed of twelve scientists, appointed to pass on these applications. Take the most active scientists out of the laboratory and make them members of these committees. ...First of all, the best scientists would be removed from their laboratories and kept busy on committees passing on applications for funds. Secondly the scientific workers in need of funds would concentrate on problems which were considered promising and were pretty certain to lead to publishable results. ...By going after the obvious, pretty soon science would dry out. Science would become something like a parlor game. ...There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashions would get grants. Those who wouldn’t would not.”

Really interesting answer Dr. Kaufmann. I must say, if scientific workers start following such so called fashion, then surely science will dry out.

Can we find a better measure to judge the impact of a publication other than the impact factor? Because the implication of impact factor currently accepted is making some very good publications also on a low end only for the journal publishing it is not a big publisher journal.

I would really like to quote Peter A Lawrence, "The mismeasurement of Science", Current Biology, 17, 15, 383-385 here as follows:

Impact factors and citations

The impact factor of a journal reflects the number of times the average article is cited in the two years following publication. Of course, there is some correlation between the quality of the work being assessed and the impact factor of the journal that publishes it, but, even so, there are many faults with this measure. Note particularly that it is not the impact factor of your paper that is being added up, it is that of the journal. Your paper may prove to be wrong and to have diverted and wasted the efforts of hundreds of scientists, but it will still look good on your CV and may land you a job. Truly original work usually takes longer than two years to be appreciated — the most important paper in biology of the 20th century was cited rarely for the first ten years. An article by Ed Lewis, the keystone of the work that won him the Nobel Prize in 1995, was quoted little in the first two years and took six more to reach its peak rate of citations.

Who is to blame and what to do?

The main villains are fashion, the management cult and the politics of our time, all of which favour numerical evaluation of ‘performance’ and reward compliance. Over recent years, within governments and outside them, people have lost sight of the primary purposes of institutions, and a growing obsession with internal processes has driven more and more bureaucracy — such as increasingly complex grant applications and baroque research assessment exercises — at the expense of research effort. This bureaucracy is placing heavy demands on scientists that lay waste their sense of purpose and attack their self-esteem. But scientists of all ranks, senior as well as junior, are also to blame as we have meekly allowed this to happen. But can we now start to fight back? We need to raise awareness of the problems and make changes locally. For example, appointment committees need to keep uppermost in their minds that they are not hiring a number but a person with a mix of abilities, of which, in research, originality is the most important. I am not alone in thinking that originality is not measured by the impact factors of journals or past citations to the author . Some centralised measures may be helpful for comparison across a country, or even worldwide but they should not be overvalued, as they are now. For hiring, promotion and tenure one should find out more about the candidate, for example by reading their work, or listening to their lecture.

The impact factor (IF) is another index that helps bring “some” order in the flood of scientific papers. I personally think that having high impact factor means a priory that the journal is red and cited and that the texts published probably have scientific importance. Just probably. If you are looking for a job, this is a quick reference that busy recruiting staff will use. Sincerely if I were to recruit somebody, I would look into the papers and ignore the IF. BUT, if I would recruit 20 people per day, I would certainly use the IF. Life is hard. There are 3 problems. The first two are linked. One is your chief, who would like some high numerical measure of your work, and this is the IF. The second is the fact that so often the administrative directors of the scientific institutions are often not scientists, and they will understand only the numbers and not the contents. And the last is that often to distinguish a paper that is ingenious and the paper that is pure stupidity may be hard. So we often go easy way and look IF. The solution is that we should try always to have pleasure when reading papers, judging papers, writing papers, or constructing our research. Then we will take the IF as a part of the funny game, and no more and no less than this.

I agree Dr. Dragan Pavlovic... You have thrown light on the practical implications of IF. For a recruiter it is difficult to read the papers and understand research. A numerical measure is a must in this case.

Please back to the origin; in 1955 E Garfield set the definition of IF (Science vol 122(July):108-111) the only purpose of the calculation was to build an indicator to help librarians in the selection process of subscription policy. The very new bibliographical index invented by E Garfield “The citation Index ®” makes available the ratio of citations. The budget of a Library has always been limited and it was a smart idea to selects Journals often cited. Remember in this time no Internet was available, and to get a copy of a paper you have to write to author and ask him a copy. Using snail mail, the process could be several weeks long…

“IF” has never been invented to evaluate researchers and such use is just a perversion!

Thanks Dr. Jacques for updating about the history of Impact Factor. Its really interesting to know this.

Following is view of an Editorial in a Journal:

Education and its very objectives have undergone a paradigm shift over the last few years, especially in India. Talent and grades have given way to showmanship. Knowledge is erroneously "judged" by publications and so-called "impact factor," sacrificing true values, paving the way to unethical and dishonest practices in the field of education and science in particular.

By and large, research paper publications emerge only to satisfy the minimum criteria laid down to boost one's biodata and to climb to higher rungs in the career ladder. In most cases, the publications fail to reveal or reflect the knowledge or expertise of the individual. As a rule, there is hardly any correlation between the number of publications and the quantum of contribution to enhance the existing data on the basics or applied science of a given topic.

One should not be working to produce a paper; rather, useful information generated out of a piece of research should evolve into a manuscript worthy of dissemination or sharing with the world. This should be the concept of science education and research without lowering scientists and institutions to "Paper manufacturing Factories."

Today, another buzzword or the fancy is the ghost chasing the R and D and academic institutions, viz. the "impact factor," in the rat race for positions in the highly commercialized academic arena. The quality of a student is no longer measured in terms of the marks he/she has scored, but is based on the impact of his/her publication which turns out to be the only deciding factor. Case is not different with prospective faculty, researchers, and even an industry professional in life sciences.

Also, there is lot of speculation within the fraternity regarding scientific publishing and the so-called "impact factor" journals have swallowed the charm of students/institutions wherein the importance of publication is understood only in terms of the impact factor. And on the other extreme, we have students/institutions which have not comprehended the punch of publishing.

The quality of a paper need not necessarily always depend on the impact factor of a journal; [1] instead, it depends on the "impact" or the "impact factor" of the research content of the paper itself. [2] The impact of a paper is obviously decided by its accessibility. A serious researcher who intends to publish his results must concentrate on the quality of his work so that it naturally finds its way into a peer-reviewed indexed journal. It is the paper that should create and offer impact to a journal and not vice versa.

1. Saha S, Saint S, Christakis DA. Impact factor: A valid measure of journal quality? J Med Libr Assoc 2003;91:42-6.

2. Campbell P. Escape from the impact factor. Ethics Sci Environ Poli 2008;8:5-7.

It is good of Teodoro to bring Leo Szilard- a visionary cross-disciplinary researcher - to light. Here is another refreshing quip of this brilliant physicist (and militant pacifist), taken from 'The Voice of the Dolphins (1961):

“Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of the democratic principle, that one idiot is as good as one genius, we must draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.”

To keep in mind whenever the temptation returns to rate scientists thru a process involving non-qualified voters, or to reduce them to a simplified index (like IF): such tools are not designed to detect original thinkers (even less geniuses!).

Can somebody throw light on the other indices that judge the impact of a publication. I have heard of Index Copernicus, DOAJ, Scirus and many other citations shown by most of the journals on their homepages. Is this relevant for publication or it is just for showing that the journal is affiliated to such indexing facilities. By publishing in such journals (other than JCR and Thomson Reuters), what is the effect on the scientific reputation of an article.

What about the Science Citation Index (SCI and SCI- Expanded)? Many times it is also used as a criteria for judging the reputation of a candidate in his/her field. In India, some government authorities consider it as a criteria for making count of a publication of a candidate during fellowship interviews and recruitments. If the paper is not SCI cited, it is not considered as a achievement of the candidate. Is it correct on their part.

First you have to consider how powerful, a bibliographical data base is, when it permits to retrieve all publications citing a given papers. Citation Index ® of Dr E Garfield was a real revolution in bibliographical research.

To illustrate, I’ll give you an example. When Dr Engvall at this time graduate student of Professor Peter Perlmann at Stockholm University, has invented a new quantitative method ELISA (Enzyme linked ImmunoSorbent Assay) the first publication was Biochim Biophys Acta 1971;251:427-434. If the database gives you all the papers citing the initial paper of Engvall , your research became very efficient with no or very few irrelevant answers. At this time Citation Index was very costly to produce, because the very limited size of computer central memory and magnetic tape as mass storage need a lot of manual operations at very long time of processing to build the linkage between publication and the bibliography at end of each paper.

The building of Impact Factor (IF) was just a by-product of the Citation Index database.

Scientific bibliographical database are in fact very and the only competitor to Thomson-Reuters (actual owner of Citation Index database) is Scopus produced by Elsevier.

In the life science field, PubMed given free of charge to worldwide researchers, makes any commercial database a non sense (From my point of view the free access to PubMed is the best gift given by the People of United State of America to humanity.)

It is perquisite to have a good database to build indicators. Then others indicator has been proposed essentially, Eigen factor and factor H proposed by Hirsch. This indicators are perhaps pertinent to evaluate an institution as a whole, but to judge a particular researcher they are a lot of smarter process …

@ Ajit .... I liked your view in lieu of the present Indian Scenario regarding publication of research work. People want their research to be published just by hooks or by crooks. The thing is totally commercialized. Just same as the situation shown in the article of Peter A. Lawrence, 'The mismeasurement of Science'. Because of these so called fashion, the science is drying out.

Hope for d best

Regards

@Mubarak Ameen, Your comment actually indirectly endorsers IF® and gives a sense that, lack of facilities in your institution will not generate good paper and that will not go to IF® journals. This indirectly is endorsement to IF® that those journals publish the best quality journals, which is never obvious.

IF is overrated. H-index is a good compromise but refers to an individual's career, not to single papers.

I guess PlosONE-like vision of scientific papers sharing is the right way.

In my opinion, Impact factor of a Journal is very important. Journal publishing original research articles such as New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Science, Lancet etc has massively large readership and these are really useful to reader, and ultimately having impact on the life of patients. It does not mean that journal with low impact factors are not good. It could be very useful such as pharmaceutical or biotechnology journal or even herbal technology journal.

I would like to share some useful information about this question. Please find the pdf attached.

Thanks

Please find another attachment throwing light on the importance of h- index and its advantages.

Thanks and Regards

Thanks to all for a very informative and healthy discussion.

There is no doubt that impact factor of the journal is very important. Scientific research work published in high impact factor journal have higher value. Most of the time original contribution or research idea which influence most of the physicians is published in such journals. Many time research work may be original and may have top value and these high impact journals may not accept such work some time because the research work may be of specific field i.e Ophthalmology, Pharmacology, Herbal medicine etc It does not mean that research work is not good; it may get published in specialty journal and may have more value because our colleagues can appreciate it much better and it have appropriate value.

Citation Index is by far the best way to judge a single paper. Tell me does IF journal ensures a Top Quality Research Paper??? In Many IF Journals you will see rather Cheap works are Published but The Names associated with those research's are Big Ones.. So, there is always a selection bias in IF journals, which makes it tough for new researchers to place their papers in those Journals. Work - if it is good will be appreciated by all no matter with whom you publish. And substandard work in a high IF journal will never improve its Quality.

@Saumendu... I fully agree with you. But can anyone suggest a way out to deal with the so called biased selections of papers by high IF journals because of certain influential personalities associated with the papers. Quality of research published is another concern.

What I observe is that in present scenario work is being done in such a way to get it published by hooks or by crooks. Quality is still there but majority of workers (old or new, doesn't matter) have publication aspects in their mind before initiation of their work. In the long run when they face long review processes, need for the paper makes the thing so complex that they modify their research accordingly so that it gets published somehow and they fulfill requirements of giving a paper out of their research work.

Isn't it?

To sum up, to judge a person by his/her IF wouldn't be a justice with all others facing the same competition during an interview for a job or a scholarship. I agree that the process of selection is complex and a numerical measure is a must. So a new measure should be decided rather than counting the impact of individual papers.

Thanks

Best Regards

As said earlier, Mostly original research is published in high impact factor journal. No doubt the element of bias can not be ruled out while accepting research work by these high impact factors journal.

Can we device such a measure that all the research from all the universities of the world be submitted at a same place online (whether it be a PhD thesis or a dissertation or any commentary etc.). From there everyone should have an access to all the literature in the world. The more an article or a review or a case study is downloaded, the more will be its use. So instead of impact factor, the number of downloads can be considered as a good measure. It can be called as a download frequency or DF... :)

Yeah, one thing will happen that all the big and small publishing houses will severely oppose this thing because then no money will be involved in the total process.

I think then the problem discussed in the question as well as the problems discussed by the experts in this discussion will be solved to a good extent. Because on such a platform, all the researchers will stand at the same level, the DF will be the measure to judge the quality of the candidate. The more heavier a work is in terms of quality and scientific content. the more it will be downloaded from the database.

This is the idea which came to my mind when I was analyzing the output of the discussion. I felt it should be shared with all the contributors in this discussion. So posted here.

Thanks all

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year 2013....

Best Regards

Dear all

I have a query which arose after going through some questions asked on RG, and the question which arose is whether impact factor or the time of publication i.e. the time taken from the submission of the paper to its acceptance is more important?

Because obviously a scientific study loses its significance if it remains unpublished for a long time.

If we have an urge towards impact factor, then we have to wait for the highly impacted journals to respond early and that is not in our hands, it takes its own time. And if we want to publish early to a non-impacted journal or a paid journal, then publication time might be less, but study doesn't get that importance which it deserves.

A question to all : Do you think that what the major part of people (being them scientists, artisans, farmers, judges never mind, but let's concentrate on scientist) in the major part of the cases corresponds to the truth (or to the most 'neart-to-the-truth version) ?

If this is the case if your answer is YES, then IF has a meaning and still more important the Citation Index, has value, if the answer is NO, they are almost useless, not completely because the simple fact people is trying to do the best for publish in high IF journals they will (probably) do more efforts to write well, to explain at best their ideas, in oter words to put on the best clothes they have that, on the lon ru, make people to have a better aspect.

..I was forgetting my answer is NO, otherwise no progress at all, and this is the reason why real innovation , very new ideas are becoming rarer and rarer in science and we are in a very manieristic era...

kindly let me know whether impact factor of a journal overrules its indexing capabilities. I have seen journals with pub med and open access but their impact factors are less, in contrary journals with impact factor 1 or 2 would not be indexed in open access sources.

No, a high or low impact factor should not be considered a criterion to judge the scientific potential of a candidate. The nature of works, techniques known and ability for development of newer protocol which can generate helpful information for society.

I would like to state that now a day a huge efforts are made by private group of journals to increase their impact factor by citing the papers in other journals of same group. The formula of calculating the IF needs revision. There must be exclusion of papers published in journal of their own group.

I personally believed that all efforts are to be made to ensure free access to all research findings. I do not understand why we have to pay to read a research paper that has caused so much money to produce in the first place. That is why I fully support Researchgate founder's vision in "a future in which scientists will publish their positive and negative results and data on his site instead of paying to publish it elsewhere". Eventually, the real impact factor is the usefulness of such results and data to the community at large.

recently, even the high IF journals lost its value and researchers trust especially after the discovery of many scientific misconducts, fabrication and falsification cases in some article that have been published in IF journals, that why I personally, think that IF and the name of the journal are not very important to measure the significance of the publication and the research

Excellent discussion on research journals. It is high time that we realize the copious money the publishers are making out of our hard work. Personally, I feel that we should strongly discourage paid journals and should see to it that our publications are widely viewed to all researchers without them having to pay for it.

It is a very interesting discussion but as far as I can see, most organisations will give you founds based on publication in high impact factor journals… so you are turning in a loop…. No IP, no founds, no research…

Journal Impact Factor. For some it is one of the most important metrics of an article’s scientific credibility. For others, it is just an aberration that does not measure anything but “prestige”. One thing is for sure, the IF has become a great headache for the entire scientific community, which has no idea how to deal with it. The problem is that despite the strong conviction that the IF does not measure the value of a scientific article, it can still influence the reputation of researchers and have an influence on their careers.

This growing problem was reflected in the recently published “San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment”, signed by 75 science organizations and 150 scientists, who expressed their opposition to judging scientists by the impact factor of the journal they publish in — rather than by the work they actually do. DORA states that:

“There is a pressing need to improve the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated by funding agencies, academic institutions, and other parties. The Journal Impact Factor is frequently used as the primary parameter with which to compare the scientific output of individuals and institutions. The Journal Impact Factor, as calculated by Thomson Reuters, was originally created as a tool to help librarians identify journals to purchase, not as a measure of the scientific quality of research in an article. With that in mind, it is critical to understand that the Journal Impact Factor has a number of well-documented deficiencies as a tool for research assessment.”

Signatories are calling for:

the need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, in funding, appointment, and promotion considerations;

the need to assess research on its own merits rather than on the basis of the journal in which the research is published; and

the need to capitalize on the opportunities provided by online publication (such as relaxing unnecessary limits on the number of words, figures, and references in articles, and exploring new indicators of significance and impact).

Source: http://openscience.com/the-big-if-is-journal-impact-factor-really-so-important/

The actual impact on the community of an article is not necessarily related to the Impact Factor (IF) and the IF of a journal may not be appropriate for the evaluation of the quality of a specific article.

A journal impact factor is linked and obtained by considering article citations on that journal. Hence, papers published on high impact factor journals are likely to get many citations. When that does not happen perhaps the authors just got lucky.

Don't mind it.

the way things are now especially with Google Scholar, I think accessibility is more important than impact factor.  I'd rather publish in an upstart journal with no impact factor that everyone can access for free rather than an expensive high impact journal that you have to pay through the nose to access if you're not lucky enough to have your library carry it.

How important is the impact factor of a journal?

http://iarcif.org/index.php/evaluation_methodology

IARC-IF is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in journals, books, patent document, thesis, project reports, newspapers, conference/ seminar proceedings, documents published in internet, notes and any other approved document. It is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a given period of time. The annual JCRR impact factor is a ratio between citations, reference and recent citable items published. The impact factor for a journal is calculated on the basis of a three-year period and can be considered to be the average number of times published papers are cited and its articles have been referenced in other articles up-to two years after publication. Also IARC calculated based on governance and commercial quality, scientific quality, editorial quality, international presence and Infrastructure, Stability, Standards, Contextual citation. In general high impact factor journals are recognized as the most influential as compared to the other journals published in the same field. The IF is used to compare different journals within a certain field. The 'International Accreditation and Research Council' indexes many Arts, Agriculture, Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Commerce, Management, Economics Sociology and Social Science journals. Those journals are indexed in Journal Citation Reference Reports (JCRR).

Evaluation Methodology

A) Calculation of yearly impact factor based on three year period.

1. X=Total cites in 2009

2. Y= 2009 cites to articles published in 2007-08 (This is subset of X)

3. Z= Number of articles published in 2007-08

4. IF=Y/Z=2009 impact factor

Actual Calculation of impact factor in 2009

Cites in 2009 to articles published in:

2008 = 456

2007 = 468

Total = 924

Number of articles published in:

2008 = 80

2007 = 74

Total = 154

Impact factor = cites to recent articles/number of recent articles = 924/154=6.0

B) Calculation of five year impact factor

1. X= Citations in 2011 over the 2006-2010

2. Y= Articles published over the years 2006-2010

3. Z= X/Y = Five year impact factor (Source: Web of Knowledge)

The impact factor is useful in clarifying the significance of absolute citation frequencies. It eliminates some of the bias of such counts which favor large journals over small ones, or frequently issued journals over less frequently issued ones, and of older journals over newer ones. Particularly in the latter case such journals have a larger citable body of literature than smaller or younger journals. All things being equal, the larger the number of previously published articles, the more often a journal will be cited.

There have been many innovative applications of journal impact factors.

1. It is important for market research for publishers and others.

2. This is an important tool for librarians, researchers and for the librarians.

3. It is also an important tool for researcher to select a reputed journal and publish in elderly and reputed journals.

4. The impact factor can be used to provide a gross approximation about the prestige of a journal. 5. It is also a tool for sensible use and quote of data with proper care in the journals.

In general authors should keep in mind that

1. Impact factor can be calculated after completing the minimum of 3 years of publication.

2. Journal Impact Factor will be a quotient factor only and will not be a quality factor.

3. Journal Impact Factor will not be related to quality of content and quality of peer review.

4. Journal which publishes more review articles will get highest impact factors.

5. The impact factor is highly discipline dependent.

6. The impact factor could not be reproduced in an independent audit.

7. The impact factor refers to the average number of citations per paper.

8. Counting citations may be independent of the real 'impact' of the work among investigators and scientific communities.

9. Self-citations and purposeful addition of the same journal article with the favorable editorial policies may cause the journals or publishers to be not considered for the evaluation of the impact factor.

10. The IF may be incorrectly applied to evaluate the significance of an individual publication or to evaluate an individual researcher.

11. A title change affects the impact factor for two years after a change is made. The old and new titles are not unified unless the titles are in the same position alphabetically.

Advantages of Impact Factor (IARC)

There are many advantages of journal citation impact factors. The most common one involves market research for publishers and others. But, primarily, IARC provides librarians, scientists and researchers with a tool for the management of library journal collections. In market research, the impact factor provides quantitative evidence for editors and publishers for positioning their journals in relation to the competition especially others in the same subject category, in a vertical rather than a horizontal or interdisciplinary comparison. As a tool for management of library journal collections, the impact factor supplies the library administrator with information about journals already in the collection and journals under consideration for acquisition. These data must also be combined with cost and circulation data to make rational decisions about purchases of journals. Perhaps the most important and recent use of impact factor is in the process of academic evaluation. The impact factor can be used to provide a gross approximation of the prestige of journals in which individuals have been published. This is best done in consideration with other considerations such as peer review, productivity, and subject specialty citation rates. The impact factor can be useful in all of these applications, provided the data are used sensibly. It is important to note that qualitative methods can be used in evaluating journals such as interviews, questionnaires, schedules etc. In general, there is good agreement on the relative value of journals in the appropriate categories. However, the IARC makes possible the realization that many journals do not fit easily into established categories.

IARC does not recommend the 'IARC Impact Factor' as the only important metrics for assessing the usefulness of a journal. Rather IARC does not depend on the impact factor alone in assessing the usefulness of a journal. The impact factor should not be used without careful attention to the many phenomena that influence citation rates, as the average number of references cited in the average article. In the case of academic evaluation for tenure it is sometimes inappropriate to use the impact of the source journal to estimate the expected frequency of a recently published article. Again, the impact factor should be used with informed peer review. Citation frequencies for individual articles are quite varied.

Every year, calculated influencing factors (impact factor) for all newspapers that refer to several major bases (Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Science Citation Index) and for all newspapers that were quoted in them. Based on the results shall be elected new magazines or exclude pre-existing. The impact factors of journals is now widespread criterion for selection of journals in libraries, as well as for the election in which the newspaper to publish the work.

From the above written to me very important because it gives me Bibliometric report on journals ("categorization") for magazines that are issued to announce, or about its value and quality through quantitative measurement of the impact factor!

In short my opinion impact factor indicates the quality of journals, compared to other similar magazine!

IF also depends on the size of a particular science community. For instance, in the field of radiochemistry, which relates to a relatively small community, impact factors of journals that accept radiochemistry papers -no matter how great the science of the manuscripts is- range between roughly 1.2 - 4.5, which is considered paltry in for instance the nuclear medical community.