Two key variables contribute to journal impact factor (JIF). The first is the number of authors. It is well established that a paper with 100 authors will be cited more often than a paper of a single author. In this context, JIF may simply be considered as an index of average number of authors per paper. As a paper by 100 authors is not necessarily better than a paper by a single author, JIF is hardly meaningful.
Another relevant variable is the funding behind the research. A field with 1000 billion dollars of funding will have more researchers citing each other than a field with only one million dollars of funding. It make no sense to compare a journal on oncology with a specific zoology journal such as Journal of Molluscan Studies
JIF should be adjusted for number of authors per paper and perhaps should also be adjusted by funding, although the latter is operationally more difficult.
Isn't both already considered by the current mechanism of counting the average citation for the 1st two years, of some sort. If more authors are cited more, its considered. If a field has better funding, more papers appear. In this way however, and this might be your point, journal IFs are not normalized to the number of papers.
The thing is in my opinion, only the 1st two years are barely reasonable for most research fields, where studies take longer to react and cite previous works. Atm. the IF doesn't reflect well methological advances, for instance, as citation will grow slowly over the 1st years, but explode soon after.
After all, how could one measure the real impact on the research field, just by two years?
Valuable discussion
Regards
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