What is the impact factor and what is it for?

Not only novice but also experienced researchers and academics need to publish their research papers in peer-reviewed journals. But before you publish your work in a particular publisher, you need to determine its authoritativeness and popularity. And after the author of the work has learned the index of the journal's importance, he can decide to have his article placed there. But, the question arises, "How exactly is this indicator to be determined, and in general, what is it?"

Such an indicator is the impact-factor or impact factor. Thus, this indicator demonstrates an average measure of the frequency with which an article is cited in a given year. It is used to measure the importance or rank of a journal by calculating how many times materials and publications from a given journal have been cited in their papers by researchers.

Why is the impact factor a significant indicator?

Using all the impact factors, one can objectively evaluate a publication and analyze how promising its citations will be. During computational operations, it is necessary to remember that the number of articles that have been published in the journal under study is directly proportional to the value of the impact factor. Therefore, before analyzing the resource, the publication should be examined through the prism of the following indicators:

• What is its intended purpose;
• How good is the basic material;
• What is the total volume of scientific articles published in it;
• How often the journal is printed;
• How recycled the information is through synthetic and analytical resources.

How to Calculate the Impact Factor

The methodology for calculating the impact-factor is based on determining the number of references to the journal of publications that have been published in it. There are different approaches for determining this indicator: for 2, 3 or 5 previous years. There are publications that carry out the calculation of the impact factor according to the classical scheme, but there are also those that apply independently developed methods for determining this factor.

The classic formula for calculating the impact-factor is: I=a/b. In this case, I is the impact-factor, which is equal to "a" - the number of citations (references) to the articles of a certain journal for the last 3 years, divided by "b" - the total number of articles published in this journal for the last 3 years. It is worth noting that this calculation does not take into account letters, book reviews, comments, and news.

Example, you need to determine the impact factor of the journal in 2020. This can be done as follows: I 2020 = a/b, where a is the number of citations for the period of 2020 in the journals that the Science Information Institute studies of articles that this publication published from 2017 to 2019. Whereas b is the number of publications in that publication from 2017 to 2019. This number does not include letters, communications, and similar materials that have been submitted previously. If the journal is new, then for it the impact factor is calculated for the period of two years.

Impact Factor for Scopus and WoS

Scopus is a multidisciplinary database. In addition to bibliographic information, it also includes lists of references from indexed publications. This allows users to search for citations. Scopus presents:

• Over 50,000 books;
• Over 20,000 journal titles;
• More than 24 million patents;
• Over 6 million conference documents.

To measure the impact of research, Scopus uses Scientific Journal Rankings. This metric is calculated in a similar way to the impact factor. Thus, to analyze citations, you can use the journal Scopus. During the analysis of citations it is also necessary to take into account the field of research. Basically, Scopus entries are journal articles that have been published in English.

It is possible that citation analysis is inaccurate. This may be the case if researchers of a particular research specificity practice publishing in non-English-language journals, or if many studies have been published in books or in formats that are poorly covered by this database.

Another modern and popular scientific journal is Web of Science or WoS. This journal uses the impact factor calculation as a metric to find out the scientific significance of publications and research. But, here it should be remembered that this indicator is calculated exclusively for the journals of the Science Citation Index, as well as the Social Science Citation Index.

To get the necessary information on WoS, you need to go to its official website. Then select the item JCR, located at the top of the menu. Subsequently, the search is conducted by keywords and by the subject of the articles. The researcher needs to focus on the links of pages where there is scientific material. Each such material has its own link. Then it is necessary to select the link and get the calculation of statistical data. It is also worth noting that the completeness of the information obtained depends on the level of user subscription.

Why might the impact factor have low values?

A researcher, using all the impact factor indicators as a whole, can obtain an objective evaluation of a publication, as well as examine it through the prism of the publication's perspective. In other words - to compare all suitable publications and choose the best one. What is important in this analysis is the selected time period during which the publications were published.

Before analyzing the resource, you should consider the publication, considering the following factors:

• What is the purpose of the journal;
• How good is the basic material;
• How often the journal is published;
• How well information is processed using synthetic and analytical resources;
• What is the total volume of materials.

It is worth noting that there are many reasons for the low coefficient of impact factor. One of the most common reasons is that domestic materials of publications in foreign journals are intolerant. For example, they may not publish a new issue of a publication in time, and thus miss the time.

Do not exclude the low quality of the material itself scientific work, and not every author is able to competently and professionally translate their work into English. The design of the article is also important. If all of these nuances are not taken into account, then there is a high probability that the work of the author will not be published.  Therefore, novice researchers often turn to professional companies that are engaged in the preparation of scientific papers for printing in well-known publications.

To summarize, "quality" is a subjective factor, with the impact factor being a good indicator of the citation of an article in a journal, but it is not always related to the quality of the work. There are narrowly focused publications that have rather low impact factors, but they are recognized and considered prestigious journals for publication. Therefore, when calculating the impact factor, the author of a scientific paper should take into account all the nuances.