Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
Citing JIF transparently as a journal-level metric in a library subscription review.
- Is an instance
Publishing a journal's citation distribution alongside its JIF, per Lariviu00e8re et al.'s proposal.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Setting a JIF floor as a requirement for promotion, tenure, or hiring.
- Not an instance
Comparing a humanities researcher's outputs to a biomedical researcher's using JIF.
Editorial commentary
The Journal Impact Factor was introduced by Eugene Garfield in the 1950s-1960s as a librarian's tool to compare journals for collection-development decisions. The two-year JIF is computed by dividing the count of citations received in year Y to items published in years Y-1 and Y-2 by the number of citable items in those years. The metric is mathematically inappropriate as a measure of the quality of individual articles or researchers because citation distributions within a journal are highly skewed: a small number of papers typically attract most citations. DORA and the Leiden Manifesto cite JIF misuse as the paradigmatic example of irresponsible metric use.
References
- Clarivate Journal Citation Reports. Larivière V et al. 'A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions', bioRxiv, 2016. DORA recommendations.
Also known as
JIF · Impact Factor · ISI Impact Factor
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Journal Impact Factor (JIF)"
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"name": "Journal Impact Factor (JIF)",
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"description": "An annual journal-level metric, published by Clarivate in the Journal Citation Reports, equal to the average number of citations in a given year to articles published in that journal during the preceding two years.",
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"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/journal-impact-factor",
"sameAs": [
"JIF",
"Impact Factor",
"ISI Impact Factor"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
