Abstract
ObjectiveThe impact factor has emerged as the most popular index of scientific journals’ resonance. In this study we aimed to examine the impact factor trends of journals published by scientific bodies in the United States of America (USA) and Europe (EU).MethodsWe randomly chose 11 categories of Journal of Citation Reports and created three research classes: clinical medicine, laboratory medicine, and basic science. The impact factor values for the years 1999–2015 were abstracted, and the impact factor of US and EU journals was studied through the years.ResultsA total of 265 journals were included in the final analysis. The impact factor of US journals was higher than that of EU journals throughout the study period. In addition, for both US and EU journals the median impact factor increased throughout the study period. The rate of annual change in the impact factor throughout the study period was lower for US than EU journals (1.85% versus 3.55%, P=0.019). A higher median annual increase was seen in the impact factor during the period 1999–2008 compared to the period 2009–2015 for both US (P<0.001) and EU (P=0.001) journals. In fact, during the second period the US median impact factor value did not show significant changes (P=0.31), while the EU median impact factor continued to increase (P<0.001).ConclusionThe impact factor of EU journals increased at a significantly higher rate than and approached that of the US journals during the last 16 years.
Highlights
Articles published in scientific journals are the means through which advances in science and innovative, breakthrough research ideas from reputable scientists are communicated to peers throughout all scientific fields
We aimed to examine the impact factor trends in a more general aspect and to investigate if the gap between impact factor of journals published by scientific bodies in the United States of America (US) and Europe (EU) continues to decrease in three major scientific fields: clinical medicine, laboratory medicine, and basic science
After the exclusion of 609 journals (395 were not published on behalf of a scientific society; 154 could not be categorized in either the EU or US group; 5 were included in the Web of Science categories more than once; and 55 for which data for less than 75% of the study period was available), 265 journals were included in the final analysis; 107 of the initial 273 (39.2%) regarding clinical medicine, 103 out of 348 (29.6%) of laboratory medicine; and 55 out of 253 (21.7%) of basic science
Summary
Articles published in scientific journals are the means through which advances in science and innovative, breakthrough research ideas from reputable scientists are communicated to peers throughout all scientific fields. As the number of journals increased,[1] several indices were developed to measure the “quality” or “importance” of a journal.[2,3] Despite its limitations and in some cases misuse,[4,5,6] the impact factor has emerged as the most popular index of each journal’s influence in the scientific community. We studied the variations of impact factors of European and American journals, in selected years during a 10-year period (1999, 2002, 2005, and 2008).[7] That study focused on four categories (biology, cell biology, critical care medicine, and infectious diseases) and showed that European journals’ impact factors in some cases increased by a higher percentage than those of American journals. We aimed to examine the impact factor trends in a more general aspect and to investigate if the gap between impact factor of journals published by scientific bodies in the United States of America (US) and Europe (EU) continues to decrease in three major scientific fields: clinical medicine, laboratory medicine, and basic science
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