ISI's Impact Factor as Misnomer: A Proposed New Measure to Assess Journal Impact

The purpose of this communication is to discuss a widely used measure of journal impact that is defined by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) and available for thousands of journals in the Journal Citation Reports. The name of the measure is the impact factor. A major issue, addressed in this article, concerns what impact factor really measures. We will argue that ISI's impact factor is misnamed and misused, and will suggest an alternative name and interpretation of the measure. We will also suggest a new measure to assess the impact of a given journal using citations.