Gillian
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|  | Journal Impact Factor
« Thread Started on Jan 6, 2006, 1:59pm » | |
I am an Australian post-graduate chemical engineer, researching in mineral processing. I am hoping to submit papers to journals shortly, but would like to know exactly what impact factor means, and if it is important.
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Stephen Neethling
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Karma: 0 | | Re: Journal Impact Factor
« Reply #1 on Jan 6, 2006, 4:53pm » | |
The impact factor is a measure of the number of times, on average, each article in a journal is referred to by another article in any journal. In other words it is an indication of how many times the articles in a journal have been used by other researchers (though self citation does tend to inflate the numbers a bit).
Impact factors are important in some circumstances. For instance in the UK the impact factors of journals that academics in a department have submitted to is used as part of the government's assessment of research performance (though it is only one small factor).
What is considered a good impact factor varies quiet a bit between disciplines. For instance, good engineering journals usually have lower impact factors than even middle of the road physics journals (two areas I publish in). Impact factors are therefore probably best used when deciding between two or more similar journals.
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barrywills
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Karma: 0 | | Re: Journal Impact Factor
« Reply #2 on Jan 7, 2006, 10:24am » | |
Hi Gillian. Further to Stephen's excellent reply, you can find more details on Impact Factor, including a paper describing the precise mechanism for how impact factor is calculated, at http://www.min-eng.com/journal/impact.html.
As a journal editor (Minerals Engineering) I have to suffer the burden of impact factor and all it entails. It can be useful, but there are many pitfalls, and you have to view impact factors with extreme care. As Stephen rightly points out, you can only compare impact factors for journals dealing with exactly the same types of contribution.
For instance, in mineral processing, you can compare International Journal of Mineral Processing (IJMP), Minerals Engineering, Trans IMM Section C, and Minerals & Metallurgical Processing, as they deal with the same range of papers, but you cannot compare these with Hydrometallurgy, which deals with only one of the areas in the scope of these 4 journals. Hydrometallurgy is likely to have a higher impact factor (and it has), due to the fact that hydrometallurgy is one of the most intensively researched areas of minerals processing. There is therefore a larger pool of researchers in this field, such that a hydromet paper is likely to attract more citations. IJMP etc also publishes papers on gravity separation, magnetic separation etc, which produce fewer citations, not because of the quality of the papers, but because there are relatively few researchers in these areas.
I don't know what area you are researching in Gillian, but lets say it is flotation, and you have produced a nice paper for publication. You now have a dilemma. You can submit it to a journal such as Chemical Engineering Science, which has a high impact factor, due to the huge pool of chemical engineering researchers, or to a journal such as IJMP or Minerals Engineering. If you do the former, then you may attract more bonus points from your insitute, but if you do the latter, there is more chance of your paper being read by other researchers in flotation, and cited by them- in other words giving you more valuable exposure.
I would be very interested in hearing the views of other researchers, journal editors etc on this important, but very controversial topic.
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Barry Wills, MEI |
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barrywills
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barrywills
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Karma: 0 | | 2006 Impact Factors
« Reply #4 on Jul 3, 2007, 6:57pm » | |
The impact factors for 2006 can now be viewed at http://www.min-eng.com/journal/impact.html.
The leading journals devoted solely to mineral processing and extractive metallurgy are:
Minerals Engineering (0.942)
Metallurgical & Materials Transactions B (0.910)
International Journal of Mineral Processing (0.884)
Minerals & Metallurgical Processing (0.191)
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Barry Wills, MEI |
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