Impact Factor and Mathematics : A Debate

Abstract

1. Overview The Impact Factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure of the citations to science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the importance of a journal to its field. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfied, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information, now part of Thomson, a large world wide US-based publisher. Impact factors are calculated each year by Thomson Scientific for those journals which it indexes, and the factor and indices are published in Journal Citation Report (JCR). The measures to calculate the impact factor apply only to journals, not individual articles or individual scientists. The relative number of citations an individual article receives is better viewed as citation impact. It is, however, possible to measure the impact factor of the journals in which a specific person has published articles. This use is widespread, but controversial. Eugene Garfield warns about the misuse in evaluating individuals because there is a wide variation from article to article within a single journal. On the other hand, impact factors have a huge, but controversial, influence on the way published scientific research is preserved and evaluated. A citation index is an index of citations between publications, which allows the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier document. The first citation indices were legal citators such as Shepard’s Citations (1873). In 1960, Eugene Garfiled’s Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) introduced the first citation index published in academic journals, starting with the Science Citation Index (SCI). There are two publishers of general – purpose academic citation indices, those are available to libraries by subscription : ISI is now a part of Thomson Scientific, Elsevier publishes Scopus, available online only. Although citation indices were originally designed for information retrieval purpose yet they are increasing used for biblometrics and other, involving research evaluation. Citation data is the basis of the popular journal impact factor. Scientrometrics, a term advented by Vasily Nalimov, is a large body of literature on citation analysis. The field of citation index brought revolution with the advent of SCI, which (as per information available) now covers literature from the year 1900 on. One may, for leading journals of the field, see Scientometrics and the Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology (ASIST). The Web of Science provides access to current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from over 8,500 of the most high impact research journals in the world. The benefits are : you can find who is citing your research and the impact factor your work is having; unveil the seminal research of an important theory or concept; you may follow the path and direction of today’s hottest concepts; you may determine if a theory has been confirmed, changed or improved; you may locate relevant articles missed through a topic or subject search, among many more. Web of science helps finding research collaborators internationally.