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Impact factor The Impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure of thecitationstoscience and social science  journals. It is frequently used as a proxyfor the importance of a journal to its field. OverviewThe Impact factor was devised byEugene Garfield,the founder of theInstitute for Scientific Information, now part of Thomson, a large worldwide US-based publisher. Impact factors are calculated each year by Thomson Scientific for those journals which it indexes, and the factorsand indices are published in
 Journal Citation Reports
. Some related values, also calculated and published by the same organization, are:theimmediacy index: the average citation number of an article in that year.the journal cited half-life: the median age of the articles that were cited in
 Journal Citation Reports
each year. For example, if a journal's half-life in 2005 is 5, that means the citations from2001-2005 are 50% of all the citations from that journal in 2005.the aggregate impact factor for a subject category: it is calculated taking into account the number of citations to all journals in the subject category and the number of articles from all the journalsin the subject category.These measures apply only to journals, not individual articles or individual scientists (unlike, say,theH-index). The relative number of citations an individual article receives is better viewed ascitation impact.It is, however, possible to measure the Impact factor of the journals in which a particular personhas published articles. This use is widespread, but controversial. Eugene Garfield warns aboutthe "misuse in evaluating individuals" because there is "a wide variation from article to articlewithin a single journal".[1]Impact factors have a huge, but controversial, influence on the way  published scientific research is perceived and evaluated.CalculationThe impact factor for a journal is calculated based on a three-year period. It can be viewed as anapproximation of the average number of citations in a year, given to those papers in a journal thatwere published during the two preceding years. For example, the 2003 impact factor for a journalwould be calculated as follows:
 A
= the number of times articles published in 2001-2 were cited in indexed journals during 2003
 B
= the number of "citable items" (usually articles, reviews, proceedings or notes; not editorialsand letters-to-the-Editor) published in 2001-2
 
2003 impact factor =
 A
/
 B
 (note that the 2003 impact factor was actually published in 2004, because it could not becalculated until all of the 2003 publications had been received.)A convenient way of thinking about it is that a journal that is cited once, on average, for eacharticle published has an IF of 1 in the expression above.There are some nuances to this: ISI excludes certain article types (such as news items,correspondence, and errata) from the denominator. New journals, that are indexed from their first published issue, will receive an Impact Factor after the completion of two years' indexing; in thiscase, the citations to the year prior to Volume 1, and the number of articles published in the year  prior to Volume 1 are known zero values. Journals that are indexed starting with a volume other than the first volume will not have an Impact Factor published until three complete data-yearsare known; annuals and other irregular publications, will sometimes publish no items in a particular year, affecting the count. The impact factor is for a specific time period; it is possibleto calculate the impact factor for any desired period, for which the web site gives instructions.
 Journal Citation Reports
includes a table of the relative rank of journals by Impact factor, ineach specific science discipline, such asorganic chemistry or  psychiatry. DebateIt is sometimes useful to be able to compare different journals and research groups. For example,a sponsor of scientific research might wish to compare the results to assess the productivity of its projects. An objective measure of the importance of different publications is then required andthe impact factor (or number of publications) are the only ones publicly available. However, it isimportant to remember that different scholarly disciplines can have very different publicationand citation practices, which affect not only the number of citations, but how quickly, after  publication, most articles in the subject reach their highest level of citation. In all cases, it is onlyrelevant to consider the rank of the journal in a category of its peers, rather than the raw ImpactFactor value.Impact factors are not infallible measures of journal quality.[2]For example, it is unclear  whether the number of citations a paper garners measures its actual quality or simply reflects thesheer number of publications in that particular area of research and whether there is a difference between them. Furthermore, in a journal which has long lag time between submission and publication, it might be impossible to cite articles within the three-year window. Indeed, for some journals, the time between submission and publication can be over two years, which leavesless than a year for citation. On the other hand, a longer temporal window would be slow toadjust to changes in journal impact factors. Thus, although the impact factor is appropriate for some fields of science such as molecular biology, it is not appropriate for subjects with a slower  publication pattern, such as ecology. (It is possible to calculate the impact factor for any desired period, and the web site gives instructions.)
 
Favorable properties of the impact factor include:ISI's wide international coverage. Web of Knowledge indexes 9000 science and social science journals from 60 countries. This is perhaps only partially correct: see below.Results are widely (though not freely) available to use and understand.It is an objective measure.It has a wider acceptance than any of the alternatives[
citation needed 
].In practice, the alternative measure of quality is "prestige." This is rating by reputation, which isvery slow to change, and cannot be quantified or objectively used. It merely demonstrates popularity.The most commonly mentioned faults of the impact factor include:ISI's inadequate international coverage. Although Web of Knowledge indexes journals from 60countries, the coverage is very uneven. Very few publications from languages other than Englishare included, and very few journals from the less-developed countries. Even the ones that areincluded are undercounted, because most of the citations to such journals will come from other  journals in the same language or from the same country, most of which are not included.The failure to include many high quality journals in the applied aspects of some subjects, such asmarketing communications, public relations and  promotionmanagement and many important but not peer-reviewed technical magazines. This editorial comment [1]of the Asian EFL Journal complains of Thomson / ISI's failure to even consider rating certain superior journals.The failure to incorporate book publications including textbooks, handbooks and reference booksinto the calculations of the impact factor.The number of citations to papers in a particular journal does not really directly measure the truequality of a journal, much less the scientific merit of the papers within it. It also reflects, at leastin part, the intensity of publication or citation in that area, and the current popularity of that particular topic, along with the availability of particular journals. Journals with low circulation,regardless of the scientific merit of their contents, will never obtain high impact factors in anabsolute sense, but if all the journals in a specific subject are of low circulation, as in some areasof  botanyandzoology, the relative standing is meaningful. Since defining the quality of an academic publication is problematic, involving non-quantifiable factors, such as the influence onthe next generation of scientists, assigning this value a specific numeric measure cannot tell thewhole story.The temporal window for citation is too short, as discussed above. Classic articles are citedfrequently even after several decades, but this should not affect specific journals.[3]
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