Journal impact factor

The journal impact factor is a citation-based metric that divides citations received in a given year by a journal’s recent citable items, usually those published in the previous two years.

Journal Citation Reports: An annual database from Clarivate that reports journal citation metrics, including journal impact factors. It publishes the metric and supplies the citation data used in its calculation.
Journal ranking: The ordering of scholarly journals by a selected measure or set of criteria. Impact factors are often used to compare or rank journals within fields.
Article-level metric: A measure intended to describe the attention or influence of an individual scholarly publication. Unlike the impact factor, it does not assign a journal average to every article.
Goodhart’s law: The principle that a measure can lose usefulness when it becomes a target for decision-making. Treating impact factor as a target can encourage behavior that raises the score without improving research.
Citable item: A publication type counted in a journal metric’s denominator, typically research articles and reviews. Which publications count in the denominator can change a journal’s reported score.
Research evaluation: The assessment of research quality, influence, or productivity using evidence and judgment. Institutions sometimes use journal scores as proxies when evaluating research outputs.
Eigenfactor: A journal influence measure that weights citations according to the influence of their sources. It offers a network-weighted alternative to the impact factor’s citation ratio.
Citation manipulation: The deliberate distortion of citation counts to influence bibliometric measures or perceived scholarly influence. Pressure to improve journal metrics can create incentives for coercive or coordinated citation.
Citation window: The period in which citations are counted for a bibliometric measure. The impact factor’s short window favors fields where articles are cited quickly.
Journal selection: The process of choosing a journal to submit or publish scholarly work in. Authors may use impact factors to compare potential publication venues.

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