Abstract
The paper summarizes some basic features of the Garfield impact factor (GF). Accordingly, GF should be regarded as a scientometric indicator representing the relative contribution of journals to the total impact of information in a field. For calculating GF, both from theoretical and practical reasons the “ratio of the sums” method is recommended over the “mean of the ratios” method. Scientific advances are made by the most influential, presumably most frequently cited articles. The distribution of citations among the publications is skewed in journals. Consequently, the GF index will be influenced primarily by the highly cited papers. It follows, GF represents the most valuable part of the information in journals quantitatively, and even therefore it may be regarded as a reliable impact indicator.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aksnes, D. W. (2003). Characteristics of highly cited papers. Research Evaluation, 12, 159–170.
Aksnes, D. W., & Sivertsen, G. (2004). The effect of highly cited papers on national citation indicators. Scientometrics, 59, 213–224.
Amin, M., & Mabe, M. (2000). Impact factors: Use and abuse. Perspectives in Publishing, 1, 1–6.
Bergstrom, C. (2007). Scholarly communication. Eigenfactor: measuring the value and prestige of scholarly journals. College & Research Libraries News, 68, 1–3, http://www.eigenfactor.org/about.htm .
Bernal, J. D. (1939). The social function of science. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press.
Bornmann, L., Marx, W., & Schier H. (2009). Hirsch-type index values for organic chemistry journals: A comparison of new metrics with the journal imact factor. European Journal of Organic Chemistry, 10, 1471–1476.
Bornmann, L., Mutz, R., Hug, S. E., & Daniel, H.-D. (2011). A multilevel meta-analysis of studies reporting correlations between the h index and 37 different h index variants. Journal of Informetrics, 5, 346–359.
Braun, T., Glänzel, W., & Schubert, A. (1990). Evaluation of citedness in analytical chemistry: How much is much? Analytical Proceedings, 27, 38–41.
Garfield, E. (1979). Citation indexing: Its theory and application in science, technology, and humanities. New York: Wiley.
Garfield, E., & Sher, J. H. (1963). New factors in evaluation of scientific literature through citation indexing. American Documentation, 14, 195–201.
Glänzel, W. (2007). Characteristic sores and scales. A bibliometric analysis of subject characteristics based on long-term citation observation. Journal of Informetrics, 1, 92–102.
Glänzel, W., & Moed, H. F. (2002). Journal impact measures in bibliometric research. Scientometrics, 53, 171–193.
Glänzel, W., & Schubert, A. (1992). Some facts and figures on highly cited papers in the sciences, 1981–1985. Scientometrics, 25, 373–380.
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102, 16569–16572.
Jin, B. (2006). h-index: An evaluation indicator proposed by scientist. Science Focus, 1, 8–9.
Moed, H. F. (2002). The impact-factors debate: the ISI’s uses and limits, towards a critical, informative, accurate and policy-relevant bibliometrics. Nature, 415, 731–732.
Plomp, R. (1990). The significance of the number of highly cited papers as an indicator of scientific prolificacy. Scientometrics, 19, 185–197.
Plomp, R. (1994). The highly cited papers of professors as an indicator of a research group’s scientific performance. Scientometrics, 29, 377–393.
Seglen, P. O. (1992). The skewness of science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 43, 628–638.
Seglen, P. O. (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. British Medical Journal, 314, 498–502.
Vanclay, J. K. (2007). On the robustness of the h-index. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58, 1547–1550.
Vanclay, J. K. (2008). Ranking forestry journals using the h-index. Journal of Informetrics, 2, 326–334.
Vanclay, J. K. (2009). Bias in the journal impact factor. Scientometrics, 78, 3–12.
Vanclay, J. K. (2012). Impact factor: Outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification? Scientometrics. doi: 10.1007/s11192-011-0561-0.
Vinkler, P. (1996). Model for quantitative selection of relative scientometric impact indicators. Scientometrics, 36, 223–226.
Vinkler, P. (2000). Evaluation of the publication activity of research teams by means of scientometric indicators. Current Science, 79, 602–612.
Vinkler, P. (2004). Characterization of the impact of sets of scientific papers: The Garfield (impact) factor. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55, 431–435.
Vinkler, P. (2006). Composite scientometric indicators for evaluating publications of research institutes. Scientometrics, 68, 629–642.
Vinkler, P. (2009). The π-index: A new indicator for assessing scientific impact. Journal of Information Science, 35, 602–612.
Vinkler, P. (2010a). The πv-index: A new indicator to characterize the impact of journals. Scientometrics, 82, 461–475.
Vinkler, P. (2010b). The evaluation of research by scientometric indicators (p. 336). Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing Limited.
Vinkler, P. (2011). Application of the distribution of citations among publications in scientometric evaluations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62, 1963–1978.
Vinkler, P. (2012). The case of scientometricians with the “absolute relative” impact indicator. Journal of Informetrics, 6, 254–264.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vinkler, P. The Garfield impact factor, one of the fundamental indicators in scientometrics. Scientometrics 92, 471–483 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0688-7
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0688-7