Journal Impact Factors
Journal Citation Reports calculates journal impact from data collected for the Web of Science. It uses various measures including journal impact factors to establish a journals impact on scholarly research and it provides an indication of research quality.
The scores assist in evaluating a journal's relative importance, especially when these scores are compared with other journals in the same field.
What are Journal Impact Factors and how are they calculated?
How do I find the impact factor of a specific Journal?
How do I find the relative ranking of a journal within a subject area or
field?
What if a journal or journals in my area do not have impact factors?
What are Journal Impact Factors and how are they calculated?
A journal impact factor is a measure used by many to determine the importance of a particular journal.
It is best used to establish the relative importance of journal titles within a particular field. In Journal
Citation Reports the impact factor is calculated by measuring data over a three year period.
- 2005 cites to articles published in 2003-2004
-
Number of articles published in 2003-2004
So if there were 400 cites to articles in a journal in 2003-2004 and 100 articles published in that journal between 2003-2004. The impact in 2005 of the journal would 4.0
Use impact factors with caution as they can be skewed in various ways.- Self citing
- Review journals often have higher impact factors because they are cited more frequently than research articles
For more information on Impact Factors see: Web of Science ISI pages.
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How do I find the impact factor of a specific Journal?
From the Library Home page (http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/
Choose Databases and Electronic Resources > J >> Journal Citation Reports
- Select the appropriate JCR edition and year.
- From the Options choose search for a specific journal and Submit
- Choose what you want to search by and enter search term and Search. ie. Search by: Full Journal Title. Type search term: Nature Genetics and Search
If you want to see the impact factor or other impact indices have been calculated click on the Journal title. In our example this is NAT GENET
This page provides you with other comparative tools such as the impact factor trend, category and journal summary lists.
Impact Factor Trend
Displays the 5 year impact factor graph for the journal. It does not provide a comparison between this title and others in the field
Click Return to Journal
To compare this title with other titles in the field :
View Category Data List
Provides the median impact scores for the field giving you a better idea of whether or not the journal of intrest is above average.View Journal Summary List
This displays all journal titles in the field. Sort by impact factor to find out exactly where your journal is ranked in relation to other titles in the same field
How do I find the relative ranking of a journal within a particular field?
From the Library Home page (http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/)
Choose Databases and Electronic Resources > J >> Journal Citation Reports
- Select the appropriate JCR edition and year
- From the Options choose View a group of journals by Subject Category and Submit
- Select one or more categories from the list by highlighting and Submit.
- The Journal Summary List will be ordered by title.
- Now choose Sorted by:Impact Factor and Sort Again. This will produce a list of titles beginning with the title with the highest impact factor for that category
What do I do if the journals I’m interested in do not have an impact factor?
Impact Factors are only one measure of journal quality. Others include :
- Peer review process
- Prestige of journal editorial committee
- Prestige of the database that indexes a journal.