Journal Production and Journal Impact Factors

In this note we will study the following problem: Does there exist a (statistical) relation between journal production and journal impact factor? The notion “journal production” is defined here as the average number of articles published by a scientific journal in a given period of time. Although the impact factor of a journal can be defined in various ways (Rousseau, 1988, 1993; Egghe & Rousseau, 1990) the “journal impact factor” used here is the “classical” impact factor defined by Garfield ( 1972, 1994)) as it can be considered as a de facto or at least an “open” standard for citation analysis. We recall that, for the year Y, this impact factor is defined as the ratio of all citations in the year Y to articles published in the years Y1 and Y-2, to the total number of source items (of the journal) published in the years Y-l and Y-2. These impact factors are published annually in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) section of ISI’s citation indexes. Citations and consequently, derived measures such as impact factors only measure visibility and/or usefulness, rather than quality. Yet, it is generally agreed that impact factors are at least one indicator of intrinsic quality (among other ones) _