The Journal Impact Factor as a performance indicator

The Journal Impact Factor is the most commonly applied metric for evaluation of scientific output. It is a journalfocused indicator that shows the attention a journal attracts. It does not necessarily indicate quality, but high impact factors indicate a probability of high quality. As an arithmetic mean of data originating from all authors of a journal with a high variance, it is inapplicable to evaluate individual scientists. For quantifying the performance of authors, author-focused citation metrics are to be used, such as the h index, but self-citations should be excluded (“honest h index” h h ). All citation metrics suffer from the incompleteness of the databases they source their data from. This incompleteness is unequally distributed between disciplines, countries and language-groups. The Journal Impact Factor has its limitations, but if those limitations are taken into consideration, it is still an appropriate indicator for journal performance.

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