How can impact factors be improved

Working from the opposite direction, an author can obtain a list of articles that have cited his or her own paper as well as discover how any paper has been received by the scientific community. The first use is key because it allows the importance and impact of an article in the scientific community to be evaluated independently of the size of a journal, the resulting "impact factor" being more useful and indicative of importance than a simple count of publications.

Later, Garfield himself explained what impact means, stating that a clinician or biomedical investigator's citation of a paper indicates the influence it has exercised on him or her, and that therefore the more a work is cited the more influence or impact it will have had on the scientific community.

Undoubtedly, nearly all SCI-indexed articles in high-impact journals are cited more than once, which is to say, citation correlates positively with impact. When the impact factor was created, no one ever thought it would become the object of widespread controversy. Besides impact factor, citation density mean number of references per article and the median number of citations over the lifetime of a journal have also become important variables, and an impact factor will not provide sufficient information in specialties that vary little over time and in which the citation half-life is long.

Such documents do not enter into the calculation of the JCR impact factor, even though they are known to receive citations and are contained in the numerator when an impact factor is calculated but not in the denominator, a fact that favors high-impact journals given that if their denominators are smaller than the real number of total documents their impact factors will be higher.

A mistaken notion is that the size of the scientific community a journal serves affects its impact factor, which is to say, the more researchers a field has the higher the impact factor will be.

This assertion does not take into account the fact that the more authors and articles there are to be cited, the more there will be to share those citations. Therefore, the key is not in the number of authors and articles in a specialty, but rather in the number of citations and their duration.

Although the drawbacks and shortcomings of impact factor use are known, 50 and it must be admitted that it is an imperfect tool for measuring the quality of articles, no better method is currently available and the impact factor has the advantage of having been studied for some time and being an appropriate approach to scientific evaluation.

At this point we can ask how we can improve our journal's impact factor. Several aspects have to be taken into account. The usefulness and relevance of using international as well as national peer reviewers for a journal have also been discussed, given that when a referee is of the same nationality, the article tends to be assessed too highly. Analyzing all the possible combinations of the preceding suggestions, it has been observed that the differences are not significant between groups when a large number of manuscripts are studied, but that the differences can be considerable in some countries.

However, whether or not it is acceptable to "play the numbers game" is controversial, 53 given that it would be an artificial strategy. This issue, which should not turn into a quarrelsome ethical exercise, was raised some years ago in Spain, 54 and it was admitted that attracting articles from Spanish-speaking authors to Spanish-language journals could produce the opposite effect, given that the citations that our medical journals receive abroad are to be found in articles by such authors published there.

If we attract those authors back to our journals, our impact factors may decrease. Encouraging increased self-citation is also not easy, given that peer reviewers and editors abroad are reluctant to accept references in other languages, both because the reviewers have difficulty in verifying their accuracy and the agreement between reference and text and because the editors wish their readers to have easy access to cited articles.

It has already been pointed out that a paper is more likely to be cited if it is published in English. Because potential citations arise from the abstract's inclusion in such indexes, the correct structuring, completeness and writing of that document is essential.

I must also insist on the importance of maintaining a journal's formal quality and editorial policy over time, as discussed elsewhere. Thus, lag times between acceptance and publication play a role, in case of conflict, by establishing priority in publishing discoveries and they reveal the immediacy of a study.

Lag times therefore are a measure of the editorial agility that is so important for a journal that aspires to be at the forefront of respiratory system research, and the application and publication of editorial process dates show a journal's level of compliance with international standards for the formal presentation of periodicals, providing an indication of editorial quality.

Garfield 48 recognized the fact that 2 articles about the same topic in the same issue of a journal have positive effects on impact factor. This is difficult to achieve, however, given the diversity of respiratory system topics, which will even make it difficult to cite articles from the same journal in the same year. Because the immediacy index is important, it can be sustained by the references to editorials that accompany one of the original or other featured papers in each issue.

Such letters improve the immediacy index and their citations become part of the numerator when calculating the impact factor, thereby contributing to its improvement indirectly. It will always be necessary to insist that authors should guarantee that references be impeccably written. Aspects that should be taken into account to improve a journal's impact factor were discussed by Garfield in an article that has become a classic.

Articles that stir up controversy are also recommended, as are papers on methodology, as all of these receive more than the average number of citations and, as a result, increase impact factor.

Another option a journal editor can consider is to select authors by analyzing their prior scientific and citation history, a strategy that would undoubtedly increase impact. Additionally, the number of citations can be increased by including articles that arise from work done at several research centers, both local and, better yet, international ones, and I would add that studies should be interdisciplinary. We should not forget that sometimes achieving a greater number of citations depends on the specialty in question, given that some specialties by their very nature require more time to produce articles with impact.

Yet another point to insist on is the need for abstracts to be impeccably written and for errors in author affiliations and personal data to be as few as possible. Finally, authors should cite all relevant works on a topic in order for a journal's impact factor to be raised.

Currently, technological developments have made it imperative for a journal wanting to take a position of leadership to have a web page where tables of contents, abstracts, or even full texts are available. Many journals are now published in both print and electronic media parallel publication and a considerable number are issued only on the web. The speed and immediacy of electronic publishing is rapidly becoming an important way to make scientific knowledge available.

A scientist interested in a subject can access electronic texts faster than paper texts, favoring citation of electronic articles and, consequently, such availability can increase impact factor. Many authors have recently inquired into the way impact factors are calculated and have proposed changes or have even suggested eliminating them. Bloch et al, 59 on the other hand, proposed abandoning the impact factor altogether and returning to the fundamental bases of evaluation, publishing only a small list of articles that have been identified after a highly selective peer review in which previously specified merits are assessed; in this manner the role of peer review would be crucial for determining the quality of an article but, as we have seen previously, this would increase the impact factor even if that is not the intention.

Garfield 61 replied that he doubted that the Internet would be the end of print publication and that in any case, even if it were so, a new type of impact factor would be invented. He asserted that provided references exist, an impact factor can be calculated, since on-line journal citation practices would be standardized sufficiently to allow such calculation. When Callaham et al 62 analyzed the features of scientific articles that are associated with greater citation, they observed that journal impact factor was the variable that determined frequency.

Therefore, it is more important than any other analyzed variables they considered, among them such relevant features as the creation or not of a control group, randomization, double blinding, prospective or retrospective design, or explicit statement of a hypothesis, or achievement on a scale of merits and qualities for scientific articles. This leads authors to believe that the journal in which an article is published is as important as the traditional measures of quality. As a result, until other tools for evaluating scientific quality are found, the impact factor, even with its imperfections, continues to be a good means of evaluation.

Experience demonstrates that the best journals are those where it is harder to have an article accepted and those are the journals with higher impact factors. Correspondence: Dr J. Hospital Militar Central de la Defensa. E-mail: igo01m saludalia. Manuscript received March 25, Articles that are published weeks after the submission date can become obsolete.

Fresh and recent studies are more likely to be cited than outdated articles. Make sure your review process works efficiently — shorter turnaround times tend to attract more article submissions. While the journal should publish a diverse range of topics, allowing certain specialties or focusing on a niche will also prove productive.

By specializing in a certain topic or field, your journal will be the go-to resource for research or citations for target researchers. One of the trending methods is changing the price factor of the journal. Readers and researchers, in general, take minutes to scan an article and move on to the next. If they encounter a paywall or are asked to provide a review before moving onto the next article, they abandon the journal.

Display ads can be an excellent way to monetize a journal. Just be mindful of the impact on user experience. For instance, avoid having pop-up ads every few minutes. Articles that are SEO optimized pop up on the first page of search results. By educating authors about how they can optimize their content, you can indirectly attract more readers and thus citations.

It ensures that all research content is visible online and also ranks high in results displayed by popular search engines. Besides Google, this also includes Google Scholar. Try to get your journal included in several niche indices to increase its rank. Open databases are available for free. If your journal has a low impact factor, start by adding it to this index.

These give more weight to content quality rather than publishing history. As your IF improves, switch to commercial indexes. These are the best way to get your journal discovered by target readers. These require a paid subscription and each has its own criteria for inclusion. High-quality peer-reviewed content, consistent publishing history, and a strong editorial board are essential for inclusion.

The team, which comprises subject matter experts, academicians, trainers, and technical project managers, are passionate about helping researchers at all levels establish a successful career, both within and outside academia.

Interesting Science vs. How to Assess the Quality of Journals. Subscribe for free to get unrestricted access to all our resources on research writing and academic publishing including:. We hate spam too. We promise to protect your privacy and never spam you. Decreasing the Influence of Impact Factor Journal quality and impact. Reading time 3 minutes.

Journal quality and impact. Author Enago Academy. You might also like. Reviewers could be encouraged to check that submitted papers are making sufficient reference to the journal.

Making journal self-citation a condition for publication, however, or specifying particular citations to submitting authors, is unethical and should not be done. Skip to main content. What You Can Do to Increase Citations and Improve Your Impact Factor Quantitative metrics are important in the evaluation of scholarly research as universities, governments, and funding bodies try to find ways to make their hiring, funding, and investment decisions based on measurable criteria.

When evaluating strategies to increase citations to your journal consider the following: Recruiting papers from highly-cited authors Analysis of the most highly-cited content from both your own and competitor journals reveals the authors who could be invited back or newly commissioned to publish in the journal, or to perhaps guest edit a future special issue. Identifying zero-cited papers A percentage of articles may never be cited at all, but would still affect the Impact Factor calculation.

Publishing more review articles Comprehensive review articles are likely to attract a high number of readers and citations.