First of all, the citation rate refers to the number of times a paper is cited by other papers in a certain period of time. This index reflects the academic value and influence of the paper, because if a paper is cited by other papers in large numbers, then the viewpoints, research methods or data of this paper may have an important impact on other researchers. The higher the citation rate, the greater the influence of the paper.
The impact factor is an index reflecting the influence of academic journals, which is calculated according to the number of citations of papers published in the past two years. The higher the impact factor, the greater the influence of the journal. The influence factors mainly reflect the overall influence of the journal, not the influence of individual papers.
Secondly, the calculation methods of citation rate and impact factor are also different. Other citation rates directly count the citation times of a paper, and the impact factor is calculated by counting the citation times of all papers in the journal. Therefore, the citation rate can only reflect the influence of a single paper, while the influence factor can reflect the influence of the whole journal.
In addition, the usage scenarios of other citation rates and impact factors are also different. Citation rate is mainly used to evaluate the influence of individual papers, while impact factors are mainly used to evaluate the influence of journals. In some cases, they can also be used together to evaluate the academic influence of a research field more comprehensively.