Sajad -

Citation indexes were first developed in the 1950s as a means to measure the average citations of articles in journals. Contemporary ‘bibliometrics’ are sourced from a US-based company, Thomson Reuters Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Knowledge, via annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The most common citation index is the ‘impact factor’ (IF). The JCR have both ‘science’ and ‘social science’ editions, which provide discipline-specific lists of journals, detailing the IF and other information, such as an ‘immediacy index’ (how quickly an average article in a journal is cited), and ‘cited half-life’ (the rate of continuing citations to a journal’s articles). Other popular ‘alternative’, but less conservative, bibliometric databases are Scopus and Google Scholar.

There are numerous critiques demonstrating conceptual and technical reasons why the impact factor is not necessarily an ideal indicator for evaluating research – especially in light of the more recent advent of open-access and online-only journals . For example:

- less than 5% of all journals are actually included in the database and indexes

- English-language, and in particular US-based journals, are favoured

- factors are usually based on levels of readership rather than the quality of published research.

For determining NAAS score of research journals, the Academy has classified them into the following two categories:- 

Category I: Those journals where Thompson Reuters Impact Factor is available, the scores are assigned as 6.00 + Impact Factor with capping on 20.00. 

Category II: Those journals where Thompson Reuters Impact Factor is not available, the marks are assigned on the basis of information provided by the Publishers.

Naas=6+IF