A new service has appeared to help judge the impact
of a journal in the world of scientific publishing. CiteScore metrics from the
publisher Elsevier is a new tool to compare with the well known JIF, Journal Impact Factor.
Similar to the Journal Impact Factor, the CiteScore is “a measure reflecting the yearly average number of
citations to recent articles published in that journal.” CiteScore uses 3 years and JIF
uses 2 previous years. Limiting the number of years included helps eliminate
bias towards journals that have been published a long time.
Another difference is that
whereas JIF is available only to Journal Citation Reports™ subscribers, the CiteScore is free online. CiteScore
is based on the Elsevier Scopus database, and the JIF uses the journals in Web Of
Science, which is not owned by a publisher.
The concept of an impact
factor was initially devised by Eugene Garfield, founder of ISI, the Institute
for Scientific Information, and creator of Science Citation Index. An impact
factor is a calculation that can be used along with many other factors to
evaluate journals within a field. However, a single article can greatly affect
the rankings.
For more information on impact factors see the JIF video. For more information on the new CiteScore, check the recent article in Nature.
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