Impact factor (IF)

The impact factor, abbreviated as IF, is the data in the Journal Citation Report (JCR) produced by Thomson Reuters. That is, the papers published in the first two years of a periodical in the reporting year (JCR? Divided by the total number of papers published in this journal in the past two years. This is an internationally accepted periodical evaluation index.

The impact factor has become a general index of periodical evaluation in the world. It is not only an index to measure the usefulness and exhibition of periodicals, but also an important index to measure the academic level of periodicals and even the quality of papers. The influence factor is a relative statistic.

Knowledge expansion:

Impact factors are not the most objective criteria for evaluating the influence of periodicals. Generally speaking, the higher the impact factor, the greater the influence of the journal. For some comprehensive or important research fields, the citation rate is relatively high because of the wide range of research fields. For example, biological and chemical journals are generally more likely to have higher influence.

Although the impact factor can represent the academic quality to some extent, there is no linear proportional relationship between the impact factor and the academic quality. For example, it cannot be said that a journal with an impact factor of 5.0 is necessarily better than a journal with an impact factor of 2.0, and the impact factor does not have the function of accurately and quantitatively evaluating academic quality.

Some domestic scientific research institutions often use the number of cumulative impact factors or single impact factors as quantitative standards when evaluating scientific research performance. Some researchers may not be promoted or rewarded because of the difference of influence factors of 0. 1, which is absolutely undesirable.

Impact factor refers to the frequency of articles cited in a particular year or period, and is an important indicator to measure the influence of academic journals. It was founded by eugene garfield, the founder of institute for scientific information (ISI) in the 1960s, and since then it has brought a series of major innovations to the development of bibliometrics.