Inflation of the journal impact factor

Le résumé fourni par la source

In 1975, the inaugural Journal Citation Reports (JCR) included the widely used bibliometric measure, the journal impact factor (JIF). The JIF is now reported in the annual JCR by Clarivate Analytics. It is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations by the number of items published in that journal during the preceding 2 years. In 2017, the JIF began including early access (EA) items using the EA date of publication, but since 2020, the JIF calculation uses the final publication date instead. The JIF is an objective and globally familiar indicator. It allows comparison across similar fields and is normalised for journal age and size. The JIF is criticised due to technical imperfections and frequent misinterpretations. Disadvantages include skewness in the citation distributions, biases in favour of English language journals, the inclusion of self-citations and the fact that citations do not indicate quality or importance. Despite these shortcomings, the JIF is widely used as a metric of productivity, influencing hiring, promotion and grant applications. Over time, the number of journals and publications has increased, but importantly, the number of articles in citation lists has increased at a greater rate.1 Consequently, there has been an inflation in the JIF over time.

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