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Journal Impact Factor: Do the Numerator and Denominator Need Correction?

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  • Xue-Li Liu
  • Shuang-Shuang Gai
  • Jing Zhou

Abstract

To correct the incongruence of document types between the numerator and denominator in the traditional impact factor (IF), we make a corresponding adjustment to its formula and present five corrective IFs: IFTotal/Total, IFTotal/AREL, IFAR/AR, IFAREL/AR, and IFAREL/AREL. Based on a survey of researchers in the fields of ophthalmology and mathematics, we obtained the real impact ranking of sample journals in the minds of peer experts. The correlations between various IFs and questionnaire score were analyzed to verify their journal evaluation effects. The results show that it is scientific and reasonable to use five corrective IFs for journal evaluation for both ophthalmology and mathematics. For ophthalmology, the journal evaluation effects of the five corrective IFs are superior than those of traditional IF: the corrective effect of IFAR/AR is the best, IFAREL/AR is better than IFTotal/Total, followed by IFTotal/AREL, and IFAREL/AREL. For mathematics, the journal evaluation effect of traditional IF is superior than those of the five corrective IFs: the corrective effect of IFTotal/Total is best, IFAREL/AR is better than IFTotal/AREL and IFAREL/AREL, and the corrective effect of IFAR/AR is the worst. In conclusion, not all disciplinary journal IF need correction. The results in the current paper show that to correct the IF of ophthalmologic journals may be valuable, but it seems to be meaningless for mathematic journals.

Suggested Citation

  • Xue-Li Liu & Shuang-Shuang Gai & Jing Zhou, 2016. "Journal Impact Factor: Do the Numerator and Denominator Need Correction?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-15, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0151414
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151414
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. E. Garfield & I. H. Sher, 1963. "New factors in the evaluation of scientific literature through citation indexing," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(3), pages 195-201, July.
    2. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2011. "Large increases and decreases in journal impact factors in only one year: The effect of journal self-citations," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 230-235, February.
    3. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2011. "Large increases and decreases in journal impact factors in only one year: The effect of journal self‐citations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 230-235, February.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Yurij L. Katchanov & Yulia V. Markova, 2017. "The “space of physics journals”: topological structure and the Journal Impact Factor," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(1), pages 313-333, October.

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