Greenwood, DC (2007) Reliability of journal impact factor rankings. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 7. ISSN 1471-2288
Abstract
Background Journal impact factors and their ranks are used widely by journals, researchers, and research assessment exercises. Methods Based on citations to journals in research and experimental medicine in 2005, Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo methods were used to estimate the uncertainty associated with these journal performance indicators. Results Intervals representing plausible ranges of values for journal impact factor ranks indicated that most journals cannot be ranked with great precision. Only the top and bottom few journals could place any confidence in their rank position. Intervals were wider and overlapping for most journals. Conclusion Decisions placed on journal impact factors are potentially misleading where the uncertainty associated with the measure is ignored. This article proposes that caution should be exercised in the interpretation of journal impact factors and their ranks, and specifically that a measure of uncertainty should be routinely presented alongside the point estimate.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2007 Greenwood; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | General medical journals, citiation analysis, league tables, science, quality, association, frequency, indexes, ideas, tool |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > Institute of Molecular Medicine (LIMM) (Leeds) > Section of Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 06 Jun 2013 12:13 |
Last Modified: | 04 Nov 2016 22:25 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-7-48 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Biomed Central |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/1471-2288-7-48 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:75607 |