Dear Abhay,

I can appreciate your frustration—impact factors can indeed be confusing.

A number of publishers and other organizations have developed their own proprietary formula to judge the relative importance of a journal within its field. Some examples, including the two you mentioned, are: The Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF), Universal Impact Factor (UIF), Global Impact Factor (GIF), and Research Journal Impact Factor (RJIF). These factors are often listed on a journal’s website in an effort to advertise their prestige and/or entice authors.

However, the most widely accepted and reputable impact factor in international circles, particularly for academic purposes (e.g. interviews, awarding tenure, career distinction), is undoubtedly the Thomson-Reuters JCR Impact Factor. Often times, this is referred to simply as “JCR Impact Factor” or “Journal Impact Factor”. You can check the JCR Impact Factor for a journal on the Clarivate Analytics website via https://jcr.clarivate.com/. Please note, you will need a login – often available from your institution’s library.

Journals not yet rated in JCR are unlikely to be prestigious and are usually not worth your time to pursue for publication.

Hope this helps! Best wishes for a smooth and successful publication journey.

Best regards,

Hamed Bazaz | Founder, Managing Director | www.journaledit.com

There are a lot of 'bogus' impact factors that derived by publishing companies or journals to purposely mislead or to highlight a less reputed/popular journal. Sometimes they try to pretend that their publications are included in Journal Citation Reports along with well-known Journal Impact Factors (JIF). So they use less popular impact measures that sound very similar to JIF to mislead authors. If I turn to your question, SJIF indicates Scientific Journal Impact Factor while RJIF stands for Research Journal Impact Factor. I think these two own by different publishing/indexing companies. However, in my view, both these are not recognized impact measures at present and will give you nothing based on their values.

Dear Abhay,

I can appreciate your frustration—impact factors can indeed be confusing.

A number of publishers and other organizations have developed their own proprietary formula to judge the relative importance of a journal within its field. Some examples, including the two you mentioned, are: The Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF), Universal Impact Factor (UIF), Global Impact Factor (GIF), and Research Journal Impact Factor (RJIF). These factors are often listed on a journal’s website in an effort to advertise their prestige and/or entice authors.

However, the most widely accepted and reputable impact factor in international circles, particularly for academic purposes (e.g. interviews, awarding tenure, career distinction), is undoubtedly the Thomson-Reuters JCR Impact Factor. Often times, this is referred to simply as “JCR Impact Factor” or “Journal Impact Factor”. You can check the JCR Impact Factor for a journal on the Clarivate Analytics website via https://jcr.clarivate.com/. Please note, you will need a login – often available from your institution’s library.

Journals not yet rated in JCR are unlikely to be prestigious and are usually not worth your time to pursue for publication.

Hope this helps! Best wishes for a smooth and successful publication journey.

Best regards,

Hamed Bazaz | Founder, Managing Director | www.journaledit.com

Manjula Wijewickrema and Hamed Bazaz thank you so much for your valuable suggestions

Dear Abhay Kumar

Great topic...

You wanted to know about the difference between the SJIF and the RJIF. The SJIF refers to "Scientific Journal Impact Factor" and RJIF to "Research Journal Impact Factor." The former is an indexing service for journals while the latter is used to evaluate the prestige of journals. Both products are owned by different companies and could be considered offshoots of the Journal Impact Factor (by Thomson Reuters). Even though SJIF and RJIF exist and are used by some (not a majority of) journals, they are not considered in major academic decisions, e.g., those related to tenure. Also their credibility is not yet established, whereas the JIF, being patented by a well-established company is well known and comparatively more credible. Note that publishing in a journal with a high impact factor is not the only way or even the best way to advance your career or boost your profile. 

Dear Abbasali Sadeghi , you are right. The mentioned 'impact factors' are fake. See the following link for other misleading metrics:

https://predatoryjournals.com/metrics/

https://beallslist.net/misleading-metrics/

Best regards.

Dear Rob Keller

Thanks a lot for sharing useful info.

Thank you so such for sharing great information @Hamed Bazaz

Thomson Ruiter is still in action?

Please tell.