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Impact factor

The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science.

As a journal-level metric, it is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field; journals with higher impact factor values are given the status of being more important, or carry more prestige in their respective fields, than those with lower values.

While frequently used by universities and funding bodies to decide on promotion and research proposals, it has been criticised for distorting good scientific practices.[1][2][3]

  1. ^ Waltman, Ludo; Traag, Vincent Antonio (1 March 2021). "Use of the journal impact factor for assessing individual articles: Statistically flawed or not?". F1000Research. 9: 366. doi:10.12688/f1000research.23418.2. PMC 7974631. PMID 33796272.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Curry 2018 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Hutchins, BI; Yuan, X; Anderson, JM; Santangelo, GM (September 2016). "Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): A New Metric That Uses Citation Rates to Measure Influence at the Article Level". PLOS Biology. 14 (9): e1002541. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002541. PMC 5012559. PMID 27599104.

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