2008 Impact Factors Now Available
Journal Citation Reports now includes impact factors from 2008. Access is available through the Becker Library Quick Links menu at the top left of each web page, under “Impact Factor.”
New metrics and features include:
- 5-Year Journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from a journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year. For journals in subjects where citation activity continues to rise through several years, this metric allows more of their total citation activity to be included in a critical performance metric.
- Eigenfactor™ Metrics, comprising the Eigenfactor™ Score and Article Influence™ Score, use JCR citation data to assess the influence of a journal in relation to other journals. These metrics, based on five years of citation activity, consider not just the count of citations but the structure of the citation network. Eigenfactor Metrics are available only for JCR years 2007 and later.
- Journal Self Cites provides analyses of journal self citations and their contribution to the Journal Impact Factor calculation.
- Rank-in-Category reveals the ranking of a journal in its subject categories based on the Journal Impact Factor. An accompanying Impact Factor box plot depicts the distribution of Impact Factors for all journals in a category.
The impact factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past 2 years have been cited in the Journal Citation Reports year (e.g., 2008). The impact factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the Journal Citation Reports year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years. An impact factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited one time. For more information about Journal Citation Reports, see the JCR Help pages.
Impact factors are attached to journals, not authors. WUSM researchers wanting to evaluate productivity of individual authors should use the h-index feature of the SCOPUS database.
For more information, or to learn how Becker Library resources can help you effectively track research productivity and output, visit the Becker Scholarly Communications portal or contact the Information Resources staff at askreference@msnotes.wustl.edu or 314-362-7085.
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