Impact factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?
By Jerome K. Vanclay. Scientometrics, 2011
326 citations recorded by the source corpus.
A review of Garfield’s journal impact factor and its specific implementation as the Thomson Reuters impact factor reveals several weaknesses in this commonly-used indicator of journal standing. Key limitations include the mismatch between citing and cited documents, the deceptive display of three decimals that belies the real precision, and the absence of confidence intervals. These are minor issues that are easily amended and should be corrected, but more substantive improvements are needed. There are indications that the scientific community seeks and needs better certification of journal procedures to improve the quality of published science. Comprehensive certification of editorial and review procedures could help ensure adequate procedures to detect duplicate and fraudulent submissions.
Subfields: Information Systems and Management, Statistics and Probability
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8f0892db8ad6196254abe452ecac14667ba39248
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In Information Systems and Management
In Statistics and Probability
- Ludo Waltman
- John C. Mingers
- Loet Leydesdorff
- Björn Brembs
- Marcus Munafò
- Raminta Pranckute
- Chaomei Chen
- Ismael Rafols
Citations in the corpus
- A review of theory and practice in scientometrics (2015, background): “It is generally agreed that the JIF has few benefits for evaluating research, but many deficiencies (Brumback, 2008; Cameron, 2005; Seglen, 1997; Vanclay, 2012).”
- A review of the literature on citation impact indicators (2015, background): “This discussion was triggered by a critical paper about the impact factor by Vanclay (2012).”
- Deep impact: unintended consequences of journal rank (2013, background): “Complementing the specific flaws just mentioned, a recent, comprehensive review of the bibliometric literature lists various additional shortcomings of the IF more generally (Vanclay, 2011).”