Diversity, value and limitations of the journal impact factor and alternative metrics

The highly popular journal impact factor (JIF) is an average measure of citations within 1 year after the publication of a journal as a whole within the two preceding years. It is widely used as a proxy of a journal’s quality and scientific prestige. This article discusses misuses of JIF to assess i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRheumatology international Vol. 32; no. 7; pp. 1861 - 1867
Main Authors Bornmann, Lutz, Marx, Werner, Gasparyan, Armen Yuri, Kitas, George D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer-Verlag 01.07.2012
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Journal Impact Factor
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Periodicals as Topic - standards
Review Article
Rheumatology
Rheumatology - trends
Periodicals as topic
Index
Bibliometrics
Impact factor
Rheumatology
Biomedical journals
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Summary:The highly popular journal impact factor (JIF) is an average measure of citations within 1 year after the publication of a journal as a whole within the two preceding years. It is widely used as a proxy of a journal’s quality and scientific prestige. This article discusses misuses of JIF to assess impact of separate journal articles and the effect of several manuscript versions on JIF. It also presents some newer alternative journal metrics such as SCImago Journal Rank and the h -index and analyses examples of their application in several subject categories.
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ISSN:0172-8172
1437-160X
1437-160X
DOI:10.1007/s00296-011-2276-1