The mysterious impact factor

The importance of a journal is typically determined by its impact factor. Recently I've discussed the drawbacks of the impact factor. Even though academic institutions use impact factor often, there are many misconceptions about how it is calculated, why it matters, and how to use it. The impact factor of a journal reflects the average number of citations to articles published. It is not related to factors like the quality of the peer review process and the quality of the journal's content. The journal that publishes the most review articles will receive the highest impact factors. According to Eugene Garfield, “impact simply reflects the ability of the journals and editors to attract the best paper available.” (Sharma M, 2014) .

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