UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT OF IMPACT FACTOR
Journal Citation Reports Version 4.0 Expands its Analytical Capabilities
Philadelphia, PA, USA-London, UK - June 22, 2005 — Since its creation in the 1960’s, Journal Citation Reports® (JCR®) and its pioneering “Impact Factor” have set the standard in providing a systematic, objective way to evaluate, categorize, and compare the world's leading scholarly journals and to gauge their influence on the global research community.
Today, Thomson Scientific (a business of Thomson Corporation) announced that the soon-to-be-released JCR version 4.0 offers expanded analytical capabilities beyond the journal level to include the category level. Data at the category level provides performance metrics that can be used to understand the journal content, and analyses that show the citation dynamics common to a large collection of articles and journals in a subject.
The resulting data deliver a simple and powerful framework for evaluating the performance of scholarly journals, by enhancing the metrics originally created by Dr. Eugene Garfield, founder and chairman emeritus of ISI®. The enhancements have transformed JCR into an essential tool that librarians and information professionals can use to identify trends in journals coverage, making it easier to manage collections.
“Last year we added a new, graphical display and smoother product navigation to increase our users’ awareness of the rich citation relationships that underlie Impact Factor,” said Jim Pringle, vice president of development, Thomson Scientific. “With these latest enhancements, we have added a layer of analysis at the category level, to help users understand the citation characteristic of large collections of articles. We’re confident these features will help provide a better context for considering the performance of any individual journal.”
JCR version 4.0 also offers a new Related Journals list. The Related Journals list measures the concentration of citations between two journals or between a journal and a category—revealing closely-related, interrelated titles. Researchers can use the list to identify journals they may want to consider reading or publishing articles. Librarians can build collections that include the most relevant journals in a particular area. And publishers will be able to spot competitor journals and the most effective advertising opportunities.
About JCR
The Journal Citation Reports provides quantitative tools
for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals. The impact factor
is one of these. It is a metric that is useful in clarifying the significance
of absolute citation frequencies. There have been many innovative applications
of journal impact factors. The most common involve market research for publishers
and others but, primarily, the JCR provides librarians a tool for the
management of library collections.
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Scientific is a business of Thomson Reuters. Its information solutions assist professionals at every stage of research and development—from discovery to analysis to product development and distribution. Thomson scientific information solutions can be found at www.scientific.thomson.com.