
Journal Citation Reports from Thomson Reuters is now updated with 2014 data about the journals. So now it’s possible to retrieve, analyze and compare 2014 Journal Impacts Factors (JIFs) for your favourite journals.
What exactly does a JIF tell us?
Well, the journal with the highest JIF in 2014 in the categories ‘Business’ and ‘Finance’ (which includes a total of 201 journals!) is the Academy of Management Review with a JIF of 7.475.
The calculation behind this figure: first we’ll find the number of articles published in this journal in the years 2012 and 2013 (29 + 30 = 59), then we count how many times these 59 articles have been cited by other articles in Web of Science in 2014 (441), and the we divide 441 by 59 = 7.475.
JIFs are by far the most heavily used journal citation indicator – and often considered to be a proxy for quality.
But it’s not undisputed, and a number of competing indicators have been developed by competitors to Thomson Reuters/JCR. Like SCIMAGO Journal Rank which is based on Scopus data.
Please contact, Lars Nondal, ext. 3691, if you have any questions.