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The journal impact factor (IF) is a measure of the frequency of citations to articles in a journal during a specific period. Authors use IFs when deciding on a journal for submission of a manuscript. IFs are also used in some academic settings as an indicator of the quality and prestige of a journal and the research published in it. However, IFs were never intended for those purposes, and the emphasis on them is jeopardizing disciplines such as nursing that have few journals with IFs. For manuscripts with practice and teaching implications, authors should select journals that will reach readers who can use their research findings, innovations, and ideas in their own clinical practice and teaching. The best journal for submission of a manuscript may have a low IF or none at all. Nurses need to understand IFs and the implications for them as authors, particularly in light of the small number of nursing journals with IFs.
Calculation of IFs is based on the average number of times that articles published in the journal during a 2-year period have been cited in other journals indexed in the Web of Science database during the next year (Thomson Reuters, 2013c ). In 2007, the producer of the database also began providing 5-year IFs using a similar formula. There are more than 12,000 journals, including Open Access journals, and more than 150,000 conference proceedings indexed in the Web of Science database (Thomson Reuters, 2012b ). In addition to indexing journals and proceedings, the database also tracks cited references and the number of times they are cited. This information is used to calculate the IF. Each year, journal IFs are reported in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database. Sidebar 1 explains how to find the IF for a journal. This article describes journal IFs, the current state of IFs for nursing journals, and considerations in selecting a journal for submission of a manuscript.
Calculation of Journal Impact Factors
Garfield (2006 ) first mentioned the concept of IFs in 1955. Citations link articles and other types of publications. Garfield (2006 ) proposed a citation index, the Science Citation Index, as a means of identifying the relationships among articles for literature searches and for use as...