What is a Journal Impact Factor?
What is a journal impact factor?
Journal impact factors measure the importance of a particular journal in a field and take into account the number of articles published per year and the number of citations to articles published in that journal. The impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. Impact factor is used for journals only.
- Journal Impact Factors HandoutDownload and/or print instructions on finding journal impact factors.
Find Journal Impact Factors (JIF)
Use the options below to find journal impact factors:
- Use the Journal Citation Reports database. Follow the instructions on this guide
- OR search for the journal by doing a Google search
- Go to google.com
- Enter the title of your journal. For example: Social Work Research
- The first result should be the website for that journal. One the homepage, try to find the impact factor.
- **Not all journal websites will list the journal impact factor. This is just one option.
How is the impact factor calculated?
Impact factor = # of citations to all items published in that journal in the past two years
(divided by)
# of articles and reviews published over those past two years referencing those citations
For example, if a journal has an impact factor of 1.0, this means in the indexed year each article published was cited on average 1 time in the previous two years in that journal.
