Impact Factor

The impact factor (IF) reports the average citation frequency of a journal article

The IF is intended to measure the importance of a journal. The IF of a journal is the ratio between the citations in a given year to all published articles and the research articles published in the previous two years.

 

Example:

2020 IF = Citations during 2020 to all articles published in 2018 and 2019
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Research articles published in 2018 and 2019

All citations of an article are counted above the line. Below the line only the number of research articles are counted.

While the IF is widely used by researchers, there are a number of issues that we want to highlight.

Download the poster to read about issues with the Impact Factor and alternatives.