The "impact factor" revisited

by: Peng Dong, Marie Loh, Adrian Mondry

Biomedical Digital Libraries, Vol. 2, No. 1. (05 December 2005), 7.

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Abstract

The number of scientific journals has become so large that individuals, institutions and institutional libraries cannot completely store their content physically, and much less so intellectually. In order to prioritize the choice of quality information sources, librarians and scientists are in need of reliable decision aids. The "impact factor" is the most commonly used assessment aid in the decision-making process of which journals to contribute to, or to retrieve knowledge from. It is also an often misunderstood tool. This narrative review explains how the impact factor is calculated, how bias is introduced into the calculation, which questions it can or cannot answer, and how different professional groups can benefit from the information that the impact factor provides.

@article{citeulike:436359, abstract = {The number of scientific journals has become so large that individuals, institutions and institutional libraries cannot completely store their content physically, and much less so intellectually. In order to prioritize the choice of quality information sources, librarians and scientists are in need of reliable decision aids. The "impact factor" is the most commonly used assessment aid in the decision-making process of which journals to contribute to, or to retrieve knowledge from. It is also an often misunderstood tool. This narrative review explains how the impact factor is calculated, how bias is introduced into the calculation, which questions it can or cannot answer, and how different professional groups can benefit from the information that the impact factor provides.}, author = {Dong, Peng and Loh, Marie and Mondry, Adrian }, citeulike-article-id = {436359}, doi = {10.1186/1742-5581-2-7}, issn = {1742-5581}, journal = {Biomedical Digital Libraries}, keywords = {bibliometrie, citation, evaluation, impactfactor}, month = {December}, number = {1}, pages = {7+}, posted-at = {2007-12-01 15:19:24}, priority = {2}, title = {The "impact factor" revisited}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-5581-2-7}, volume = {2}, year = {2005} }

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TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:436359 L3 - citeulike-article-id:436359 TI - The "impact factor" revisited JF - Biomedical Digital Libraries VL - 2 IS - 1 SP - 7 SN - 1742-5581 N2 - The number of scientific journals has become so large that individuals, institutions and institutional libraries cannot completely store their content physically, and much less so intellectually. In order to prioritize the choice of quality information sources, librarians and scientists are in need of reliable decision aids. The "impact factor" is the most commonly used assessment aid in the decision-making process of which journals to contribute to, or to retrieve knowledge from. It is also an often misunderstood tool. This narrative review explains how the impact factor is calculated, how bias is introduced into the calculation, which questions it can or cannot answer, and how different professional groups can benefit from the information that the impact factor provides. KW - bibliometrie KW - citation KW - evaluation KW - impactfactor AU - Dong, Peng AU - Loh, Marie AU - Mondry, Adrian PY - 2005/12/05/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-5581-2-7 ER -

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