Research Guides: Concepts of Research Methodology (HIIM 609): Journal Impact Factor

Journal Impact Factor

Journal Impact Factor (JIF) measures the frequency the average article in a given journal has been cited in a particular year and measures a journal's importance or rank by the number of times its articles are cited. JIF is calculated according to a two-year period and divides the number of times articles were cited by the number of articles which may be cited. Eigenfactor scores measure how likely a journal is to be cited and how frequently its information may be used by researchers. JIF information is based on journal citations from Web of Science Core Collection and available in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database.

The table below lists the top 10 journals in JCR in the medical informatics category:

Journal Title	Total Cites	Journal Impact Factor (JIF)	Eigenfactor Score
Journal of Medical Internet Research	10,875	4.671	0.02741
JMIR mHealth and uHealth	1,418	4.541	0.00463
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association	8,713	4.270	0.01758
IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics	2,992	3.850	0.00810
Medical Decision Making	4,718	3.012	0.00923
International Journal of Medical Informatics	4,584	2.957	0.00660
Journal of Biomedical Informatics	5,871	2.882	0.00834
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine	2,097	2.879	0.00287
Computer Methods and Programs in Medicine	5,915	2.674	0.00889
Statistical Methods in Medical Research	3,435	2.284	0.00948

For more information about how journal impact factors are calculated, visit Journal Citation Reports: Learn the Basics from Clarivate Analytics.

To find other journals' impact factors, visit JCR (Journal Citation Reports) in the "Databases" tab to the left. For a brief tutorial on how to use JCR, please watch the video below.

Source: University of Illinois Chicago University Library

Research Impact

Research impact can be measured in different ways using different tools. Traditionally, the indicators included the number of times a publication was cited and journal impact. Recent years, altmetrics have been used to measure a researcher's impact, which takes into account not just academic citations (traditional means), but also digital use and sharing of data (non-traditional means). It can include the number of times a paper has been viewed, tweeted, 'liked' on Facebook, covered by the media or blogs, downloaded, cited on Wikipedia or bookmarked online.

Author/Article Impact

PlumX for Scopus is a 3rd party web application that runs within the sidebar of Scopus article and abstract pages. It displays all of the social or mainstream media mentions gathered for a particular paper as well as reader counts on popular reference managers (e.g., CiteULike and Mendeley)
H index is based on a scholar's most cited works and the number of times these have been referenced in the literature. Tools for calculating your H-index include Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar Citations.
iCite is created by the Office of Portfolio Analysis (OPA) at the National Institute of Health (NIH). It's a web application that provides a panel of bibliometric information for scientific publications within a defined analysis group. More information from the iCite User Guide.
PLoS Article Level Metrics (ALM) is a service provided by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) for all authors of works published in PLoS journals.
Research ID: A free product developed by Thomson Reuters. Once registered, a researcher is assigned a unique ID number that associated with their publications. If you have an EndNote Online account or Web of Science account you do not need to register with Research ID site.
Publish or Perish - From Harzing.com, a well-known resource in scholarly publishing, this software tool calculates numerous research metrics based on Google Scholar data.

Journal Impact

Journal Citation Report (JCR) is an authoritative resource for impact factor data from ISI Web of Knowledge. JCR provides impact factors and rankings of journals in the social and life sciences based on millions of citations. It serves as a means to compare different journals in a field of study.

Journal Metrics is from Elsevier and uses Scopus as data source. It applies to over 20,000 journals, book series, and proceedings. Journal Metrics uses the following three different impact metrics to evaluate a journal's research impact:
- SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper) measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field.
- IPP (The Impact per Publication) measures the ratio of citations per article published in the journal.
- SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) is a prestige metric based on the idea that not all citations are the same.

Eigenfactor Score and Article Influence are ratings of the total importance of a scientific journal or article.

Google Scholar Metrics provides an easy way to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Scholar Metrics summarize recent citations to many publications to help authors as they consider where to publish their new research. You can browse the top 10 publications.

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