Does impact factor really matter?

Jun 13, 2022 1046574. Impact Factors are used to measure the importance of a journal by calculating the number of times selected articles are cited within the last few years. The higher the impact factor, the more highly ranked the journal. It is one tool you can use to compare journals in a subject category.

Is 2.7 a good impact factor?

In general, an impact factor of 10 or higher is considered remarkable, while 3 is good, and the average score is less than 1.

Is 4.5 a good impact factor?

In most fields, the impact factor of 10 or greater is considered an excellent score while 3 is flagged as good and the average score is less than 1.

Is an impact factor of 7.5 good or bad?

An impact factor of about 7.5 is relatively high and generally indicates that the journal is influential within its field.

Is impact factor 12 good?

It's one of the most popular metric tools used for this purpose. However, what is a good impact factor? Technically, it depends on the subject category, but we can safely say that 10 is an excellent score in most fields.

Understanding the impact factor

Is impact factor 10 good?

In most fields, the journals with impact factor of 10 or greater is considered an excellent score while 3 and above is considered as good. Whereas, a journal with an impact factor equal to 1 is considered low.

Why is impact factor a poor metric?

Indeed, the fact that it is simple to understand — it is roughly the average number of citations that primary research papers published in two consecutive years gather in the following year — makes it all too easy to point out its shortcomings: the metric also includes citations to non-primary content (such as reviews ...

Is 6.3 A good impact factor?

The top 5% of journals have impact factors approximately equal to or greater than 6 (610 journals or 4.9% of the journals tracked by JCR).

What is the impact factor of PNAS?

According to Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2022 impact factor of 11.1. PNAS is the second most cited scientific journal, with more than 1.9 million cumulative citations from 2008 to 2018. In the mass media, PNAS has been described variously as "prestigious", "sedate", "renowned" and "high impact".

Is plos one a reputable journal?

PLOS ONE is a peer reviewed scientific journal with a rigorous editorial screening and assessment process made up of several stages.

What is a good h-index after 30 years?

h index of 60 after 20 years, or 90 after 30 years, characterizes truly unique individuals.

Is 2.0 a good impact factor?

Impact factors can vary greatly depending on the field and journal, but generally, a score above 2.0 is considered to be in the top 25% of journals in that field. A score of 2.1 indicates that the journal is highly cited and influential within its field.

Is impact factor 2 high?

The majority of journals, in fact, fall in the bracket of an IF of 1-1+. So, a journal with an IF of 2-2.5 would be considered having a higher impact than these journals. A journal with an IF of 5 or above would be considered high-impact, but note that these would be fewer in number.

What is a good h-index?

What is a Good H-Index? Hirsch reckons that after 20 years of research, an h-index of 20 is good, 40 is outstanding, and 60 is truly exceptional. In his paper, Hirsch shows that successful scientists do, indeed, have high h-indices: 84% of Nobel Prize winners in physics, for example, had an h-index of at least 30.

Is Frontiers predatory or not?

All Frontiers journals are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License. In 2015, Frontiers Media was classified as a possible predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall. Based on a series of information published here, we decided to include the Frontiers Media journals on the predatory publications list.

What is the rejection rate for Frontiers?

Rejection rates in Frontiers journals are around ~27% for submissions outside of research topics, most manuscripts are published within 3 months of submission, and yet, Frontiers citations rates are amongst the very highest when compared to journals in the same categories.

What makes a journal predatory?

The consensus definition reached was: “Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and ...

What are good impact scores?

Impact scores run from 10 to 90, where 10 is best. Generally speaking, impact/priority scores of 10 to 30 are most likely to be funded; scores between 31 and 45 might be funded; scores greater than 46 are rarely funded.

What is the 5 year impact factor?

The ISI 5-Year Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the given Journal Citation Report (JCR) year.

What is the median impact factor?

What is the median impact factor? The median impact factor is a number that helps you understand the "middle" impact factor of indexed journals in a field. Half of the journals in a discipline or subfield will be above the median impact factor, while half of the journals will be below this figure.

What is wrong with impact factor?

Statistically, there is also a problem with JIFs because a high impact factor may be derived from a few highly cited papers. Most papers do not get many citations, but are still regarded as influential because the overall impact of certain individual papers in the journal is high.

Why is impact factor flawed?

JIF is an aggregate value calculated based on citations of the individual articles in a journal. But because citation counts are highly variable among articles, JIF cannot tell us anything about the quality of any given individual article.

What are the disadvantages of impact factor?

The impact factor can be influenced and biased (intentionally or otherwise) by many factors. Extension of the impact factor to the assessment of journal quality or individual authors is inappropriate. Extension of the impact factor to cross-discipline journal comparison is also inappropriate.