Evaluating the quality of a journal: JCEHP's 2010 impact factor

✍ Scribed by Curtis A. Olson

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 43 KB
• Volume: 31
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-1912
• DOI: 10.1002/chp.20132

✦ Synopsis

The editorial office recently received notice of JCEHP's 2010 impact factor: 2.575. This number represents a significant increase over previous years (TABLE ) and is cause for measured celebration. I say "measured" for a variety of reasons, but before getting into them, a few words about this simultaneously lauded and maligned measure of journal quality.

The impact factor (IF) was first proposed by Eugene Garfield in 1955 in the journal Science as a basis for deciding which journals to include in the newly created Science Citations Index. 1 Published annually by Thomson Reuters, the IF is "a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year." 2 Impact factors are calculated according to the following formula, 3 which uses 2010 and JCEHP as the example: 2010 JCEHP Impact Factor = (citations in 2010 to all items published in JCEHP in 2009 + citations in 2010 to all items published in JCEHP in 2008) / (scholarly citable items published in JCEHP in 2009 + scholarly citable items published in JCEHP in 2008).

TABLE shows the numbers behind JCEHP's 2010 IF.

Limitations of the IF

As a highly visible, quantitative, and easily accessed measure of journal quality, it is important to recognize the limitations of the IF. In a reflection on 50 years of the IF, 1 its originator observed:

Disclosures: The author reports none.