Space Weather Receives First Impact Rating

Abstract

Journal Citation Reports, published by Thomson Scientific (http://scientific.thomson.com/isi/), has issued its first impact factor for Space Weather. The number is 1.610. I consider this to be very good, strongly validating the impact that Space Weather has already made in its short life within the community of Space Weather professionals. The impact factor for science and engineering publications is important for authors and readers of journals and related publications. The factor provides authors with a comparative measure of how many readers their papers can expect to attract and how their papers subsequently influence others’ research. Readers of journals with high impact factors recognize that the papers they view likely represent high-quality, influential work. The impact rating for Space Weather is determined by the total number of citations in 2006 for articles published in 2005 and 2004 (when Thomson Scientific began monitoring Space Weather, 3 months after its launch) in the journal category of Space Weather divided by the total number of articles published in the category in 2004 and 2005. As readers know, Space Weather is an unusual journal in several respects and thus does not fit readily into the categories that Journal Citation Reports use. Space Weather is not a typical technical journal, but more of a technical magazine because it also includes features, news, opinions, and meeting reports as well as science papers. The magazine is also not purely a “geophysics” or an “astrophysics” or an “engineering” publication: The papers in Space Weather attempt to build bridges between the science of space research and the applications of this research. And, in addition to Space Weather being an online journal, a print digest (Space Weather Quarterly) is published each season with selected technical and news articles. The 2006 impact factor for Space Weather places it approximately in the median of impact factors for the three categories geochemistry and geophysics, astronomy and astrophysics, and meteorology and atmospheric sciences. As a relative measure, Space Weather's companion and preeminent geophysical publication, the Journal of Geophysical Research, has a 2006 impact factor of 2.800, and the factor for Geophysical Research Letters is 2.602. There are several technical publications with some overlaps with Space Weather's coverage and with which Space Weather might be considered to be competing. The 2006 impact factors for those publications that I have examined are a factor of 2–3 below the factor for Space Weather. The high regard for Space Weather by professionals is due to many things, not the least of which are you, the readers and contributors. Your contributions to the journal in terms of papers, commentaries, and suggestions have made Space Weather indispensable reading for professionals. Also important, the support and advice of the publication staff of the journal at AGU deserve special mention for Space Weather's success to date. Thank you to everyone who has helped make Space Weather a success.