Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Journal impact measures in bibliometric research

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The Impact Factor introduced by Eugene Garfield is a fundamental citation-based measure for significance and performance of scientific journals. It is perhaps the most popular bibliometric product used in bibliometrics itself, as well as outside the scientific community. First, a concise review of the background and history of the ISI impact factor and the basic ideas underlying it are given. A cross-citation matrix is used to visualise the construction of the Impact Factor and several related journal citation measures.Both strengths and flaws of the impact factor are discussed. Several attempts made by different authors to introduce more sophisticated journal citation measures and the reasons why many indicators aiming at a correction of methodological limitations of the Impact Factor were not successful are described. The next section is devoted to the analysis of basic technical and methodological aspects. In this context, the most important sources of possible biases and distortions for calculation and use of journal citation measures are studied. Thereafter, main characteristics of application contexts are summarised. The last section is concerned with questions of statistical reliability of journal citation measures. It is shown that in contrast to a common misbelief statistical methods can be applied to discrete "skewed" distributions, and that the statistical reliability of these statistics can be used as a basis for application of journal impact measures in comparative analyses. Finally, the question of sufficiency or insufficiency of a single, howsoever complex measure for characterising the citation impact of scientific journals is discussed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Allison, P. (1980), Inequality of scientific productivity, Social Studies of Science, 10: 163-179.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asai, I. (1981), Adjusted age distribution and its application to Impact Factor and Immediacy Index, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 32:172-174.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braun, T., GlÄnzel, W. (1995), On a source of error in computing Journal Impact Factors, Chemical Intelligencer, January, 31-32.

  • Braun, T., GlÄnzel, W., Schubert, A. (1989), Some data on the distribution of journal publication types in the Science Citation Index Database, Scientometrics, 15: 325-330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garfield, E. (1972), Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation, Science, 178: 471-479.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garfield, E., Citation Indexing: Its Theory and Applications in Science, Technology and Humanities, New York: Wiley, 1979.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garfield, E. (1986), The evolution of physical chemistry to chemical physics, Current Contents, 3: 3-12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garfield, E. (1987), Why are the impacts of leading medical journal so similar yet so different: Item-by-item audits reveal a diversity of editorial materials, Current Contents, January 12.

  • Geller, N. L. (1978), Citation influence methodology of Pinski and Narin, Information Processing and Management, 14: 93-95.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • GlÄnzel, W., Schubert, A. (1988), Characteristic scores and scales in assessing citation impact, Journal of Information Science, 14: 123-127.

    Google Scholar 

  • GlÄnzel, W., Schubert, A. (1995), Predictive aspects of a stochastic model for citation processes, Information Processing & Management, 31: 69-80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • GlÄnzel, W., Schoepflin, U. (1994), A stochastic model for the ageing analyses of scientific literature, Scientometrics, 30: 49-64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • GlÄnzel, W., Schoepflin, U. (1995), A bibliometric study on ageing and reception processes of scientific literature, Journal of Information Science, 21: 37-53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirst, G. (1978), Discipline Impact Factor: a method for determining core journal lists, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 29: 171-172.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingwersen, P., Larsen, B., Wormell, I. (2000), Applying diachronous citation analysis to research program evaluations, In: Cronin, B., Atkins, H. B. (Eds). The Web of Knowledge: A Festschrift in Honor of Eugene Garfield, Medford, N. J.: Information Today, Inc. & American Society for Information Science, pp. 373-387.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingwersen, P., Larsen, B., Rousseau, R., Russell., J. (2001), The publication-citation matrix and its derived quantities, Chinese Science Bulletin, 46: 524-528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindsey, D. (1978), Corrected quality ratio: A composite index of scientific contribution to knowledge, Social Studies of Science, 8: 349-354.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moed, H. F., van Leeuwen, Th. N. (1995), Improving the accuracy of the Institute for Scientific Information's Journal Impact Factor, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 46: 461-467.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moed, H. F., van Leeuwen, Th. N. (1996), Impact Factors can mislead, Nature, 381: 186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moed, H. F., van Leeuwen, Th. N., Reedijk, J. (1996), A critical analysis of the Journal Impact Factors of Angewandte Chemie and the Journal of the American Chemical Society: Inaccuracies in published impact factors based on overall citations only, Scientometrics, 37: 105-115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moed, H.F., van Leeuwen, Th. N., Reedijk, J. (1998), A new classification system to describe the ageing of scientific journals and their impact factors. Journal of Documentation, 54: 387-419.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moed, H.F., van Leeuwen, Th. N., Reedijk, J. A. (1999), Towards appropriate indicators of journal impact, Scientometrics, 46: 575-589

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinski, G., Narin, F. (1976), Citation influence for journal aggregates of scientific publications, Information Processing and Management, 12: 297-312.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Price, D. J. de Solla ( 1970), Citation measures of hard science, soft science, technology, and non-science, In: C. E. Nelson, D. K. Pollak (Eds), Communication among Scientists and Engineers (Heat, Lexington, Mass. pp. 1-12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rousseau, R. (1988), Citation distribution of pure mathematics journals. In: L. Egghe, R. Rousseau (Eds), Informetrics 87/88, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., pp. 249-260.

  • Schubert, A., GlÄnzel W. (1983), Statistical reliability of comparisons based on the citation impact of scientific publications, Scientometrics, 5: 59-74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schubert, A., GlÄnzel, W. (1986), Mean response time. A new indicator of journal citation speed with application to physics journals, Czechoslovakian Journal of Physics, B 36: 121-125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schubert, A., GlÄnzel, W., Braun, T. (1987), Subject field characteristic citation scores and scales for assessing research performance, Scientometrics, 12: 267-291.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schubert, A., GlÄnzel, W., Braun, T. (1989), Scientometric Datafiles. A comprehensive set of indicators on 2649 journals and 96 countries in all major fields and subfields 1981-1985, Scientometrics, 16: 3-478.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seglen, P. O. (1997), Citations and Journal Impact Factors: Questionable indicators of research quality, Allergy, 52: 1050-1056.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smart, J. C., Elton, C. F. (1982), Consumption factor scores of psychology journals, Scientometrics, 4: 349-360.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, R. (1983), Condensed matter physics journals, Scientometrics, 5: 291-301.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, R., GlÄnzel, W. (1988), Journal citation measures: A concise review, Journal of Information Science, 14: 47-56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomer, C. (1986), A statistical assessment of two measures of citation: the impact factor and the immediacy index, Information Processing and Management, 22: 251-258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Leeuwen, Th. N., Moed, H. F., Reedijk, J. (1997), JACS still topping Angewandte Chemie: Beware of erroneous impact factors, Chemical Intelligencer, July, 32-36.

  • Wallace, D. P. (1986), The relationship between journal productivity and obsolescence, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 37: 136-145.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yanovsky, V. I. (1981), Citation analysis significance of scientific journals, Scientometrics, 3: 223-233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ISSRU E-mail, 1051, Budapest, Arany János u 1

    Wolfgang Glänzel

  2. Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, PO Box 9555, 2300, RB Leiden, The Netherlands

    Henk F. Moed

Authors
  1. Wolfgang Glänzel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Henk F. Moed
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Glänzel, W., Moed, H.F. Journal impact measures in bibliometric research. Scientometrics 53, 171–193 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014848323806

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014848323806

Keywords

Search

Navigation