[This post is part of an ongoing series about impact factors. See Impact Factor Boxing 2012 for the latest figures.]
Well it’s that time again. The annual sweaty fist-fight for supremacy between the scientific journals, as measured by impact factors, is upon us. Much ink (virtual and actual) has been spilt on the subject of impact factors, which we won’t add to here, other than to say:
Hey look, the “European” journals might be catching up with the “American” ones. [1]
So, love them, loathe them, use them, abuse them, ignore them or obsess over them… here’s a tiny selection of the 10,196 journals that are tracked in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) ordered by increasing impact.
WARNING: Abusing these figures can seriously damage your Science – you have been warned! (normal caveats apply)
| Journal | 2010 data from isiknowledge.com/JCR | Eigenfactor™ Metrics | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Cites | Impact Factor | 5-Year Impact Factor | Immediacy Index | Articles | Cited Half-life | Eigenfactor™ Score | Article Influence™ Score | |
| The Naval Architect* | 16 | 0.005 | 0.004 | 0.005 | 189 | 0.00002 | 0.001 | |
| BMC Bioinformatics | 12653 | 3.028 | 3.786 | 0.475 | 690 | 3.9 | 0.08086 | 1.495 |
| PLoS ONE | 42795 | 4.411 | 4.610 | 0.515 | 6714 | 2.1 | 0.32121 | 1.943 |
| OUP Bioinformatics | 40659 | 4.877 | 6.325 | 0.707 | 700 | 5.7 | 0.17973 | 2.649 |
| PLoS Computational Biololgy | 6849 | 5.515 | 6.251 | 0.727 | 406 | 2.8 | 0.06075 | 2.984 |
| Genome Biology | 14194 | 6.885 | 7.353 | 1.295 | 173 | 4.9 | 0.07688 | 3.585 |
| Nucleic Acids Research | 100444 | 7.836 | 7.314 | 1.755 | 1101 | 7.0 | 0.32867 | 3.016 |
| Briefings in Bioinformatics | 2886 | 9.283 | 7.395 | 1.204 | 49 | 5.8 | 0.01013 | 2.737 |
| PLoS Biology | 18453 | 12.469 | 14.375 | 2.706 | 214 | 4.1 | 0.16084 | 8.225 |
| Science | 469704 | 31.364 | 31.769 | 6.789 | 862 | 9.0 | 1.46485 | 16.859 |
| Nature | 511145 | 36.101 | 35.241 | 8.791 | 862 | 9.1 | 1.74466 | 19.334 |
| New England Journal of Medicine | 227674 | 53.484 | 52.362 | 10.675 | 345 | 7.5 | 0.69167 | 21.366 |
| CA – A Cancer Journal for Clinicians ** | 9801 | 94.262 | 70.216 | 8.667 | 18 | 3.8 | 0.04923 | 24.782 |
* The Naval Architect is included here for reference as it has the lowest non-zero impact factor of any science journal. A rather dubious honour…
** The Cancer Journal for Clinicians is the highest ranked journal in science, is included here for reference.
[Creative Commons licensed picture of Khmer boxing picture by lecercle]
References
- Karageorgopoulos, D., Lamnatou, V., Sardi, T., Gkegkes, I., & Falagas, M. (2011). Temporal Trends in the Impact Factor of European versus USA Biomedical Journals PLoS ONE, 6 (2) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016300
O'Really? 
[…] of downloads and views of the articles. Even better, the journal has done fantastically well by traditional measures. It’s done so well that many other publishers have even started to copy their model. […]
Pingback by On sharing research and the value of peer-review: Mendeley’s response to #SOPA and the Research Works Act. | Mendeley Blog — January 14, 2012 @ 1:06 am |
Well done. Maintaining an impact factor above 4 with more than 6000 papers published in an year is really an accomplishment for PLoS ONE. Compare that to NEJM that published only 345 aricles, about 20 times less. Ideally, if PLOS were publishing such selected articles, its impact factor should be over 80! The impact factor boxing well described here too is something that every investigator should now. Go PLoS ONE!
Comment by Scientist — January 24, 2012 @ 7:50 pm |