IMPACT FACTOR: DOES IT HAVE AN IMPACT?
Abstract
Editor,The journal's impact factor is at present, considered a
yard stick for measuring the relative quality and
significance of a journal. It is defined as the
frequency with which the '˜average article' in a
journal has been cited in a particular year or period.1
For a given year, this is calculated as the total number
of citations received in that year to articles published
in the previous two years divided by the total number
of citable items published by the journal in the same
two years. The Impact Factor was devised by and is
calculated by The Institute for Scientific
Information® (ISI®), now known as '˜Thomson
Scientific'.
Unfortunately as stated by Dr. Abbasi in
BMJ 2004, ISI® only follows about 5% of over
130,000 known medical and scientific journals
published annually. Moreover, the citation ranking
invented by Eugene Garfield is scientifically
meaningless as is established by indisputable
evidence and even the inventor for a long time has
warned people not to trust impact factor for solely
judging the quality of a journal and in an article has
termed its usage as '˜dangerous'.2
Despite the realisation on a global scale that
impact factors are a faulty system of assessment of a
journal3, we tend to agree with Hoeffel4 that '˜impact
Factor is not a perfect tool to measure the quality of
articles but there is nothing better and it has the
advantage of already being in existence and is,
therefore, a good technique for scientific evaluation.
Even today career advancement, getting funding and
grants all depends on how many articles one has
published in journals with good impact factors. With
increased awareness about impact factors and their
potential impact on career growth and international
recognition many researchers are now targeting
international indexed journals with good impact
factors. The number of publications from Pakistan in
international indexed journals with impact factors
arose by about 179% from 1992 to 2002 reflecting
the change in this trend.5 In this dim scenario the
local non-indexed medical journals face a serious
challenge. They will have to work hard towards
sustained improvement of the journal from
submission to publication as the time, as yet has not
come to ignore the numbers. This will ultimately
have huge implications for evidence based medicine
in third world countries especially Pakistan where
local journals provide good evidence comparable to
international standards.
References
Garfield E. The ISI Impact factor. [online] 2006 [Accessed:
st December 2009] Available from URL:
http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/ess
ays/impact_factor.
Garfield E. How can impact factors be improved? BMJ 1996;
: 411-3.
Editorial: Not so deep impact. Nature 2005;435:1003-4.
Hoeffel C. Journal impact factors. Allergy 1998;53:1225.
Ghaleh N R, Siadat F, Azizi F. Quantitative and Qualitative
Assessment of Biomedical Publications from Iran, Pakistan
and Egypt through their Impact Factor. J Pak Med Assoc Oct
;54(10):528-9.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Journal of Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad is an OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL which means that all content is FREELY available without charge to all users whether registered with the journal or not. The work published by J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad is licensed and distributed under the creative commons License CC BY ND Attribution-NoDerivs. Material printed in this journal is OPEN to access, and are FREE for use in academic and research work with proper citation. J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad accepts only original material for publication with the understanding that except for abstracts, no part of the data has been published or will be submitted for publication elsewhere before appearing in J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad. The Editorial Board of J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad makes every effort to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of material printed in J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad. However, conclusions and statements expressed are views of the authors and do not reflect the opinion/policy of J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad or the Editorial Board.
USERS are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
AUTHORS retain the rights of free downloading/unlimited e-print of full text and sharing/disseminating the article without any restriction, by any means including twitter, scholarly collaboration networks such as ResearchGate, Academia.eu, and social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar and any other professional or academic networking site.
