IMPACT FACTORS: USE AND ABUSE

Abstract

Amin and Mabe discuss the limitations of the impact factor, how it can and how it should not be used. Among others, the impact factor is only one of three standardized measures created by the Institute of Scientific Information which can be used to measure the way a journal receives citations to its articles over time. It is a measure of the relative size of the citation curve in years calculated by dividing the number of current citations a journal receives to articles published in the two previous years by the number of articles published in those same years.