Journal Impact Factor (JIF) or Impact Factor (IF) of an academic journal is a measure, calculated by the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that particular journal. This article explains how to find the impact factor of a journal in detail.
Impact Factor is the more valuable parameter among the academicians, in order to select the journal for publication. It also helps to identify the trustworthiness of the facts given in that journal.
The h-index can be calculated automatically in Web of Science and Scopus or manually in other databases that provide citation information (e.g. SciFinder, PsychINFO, Google Scholar). In this article, we are going to find out, How the journal impact factor and h-index are calculated?
What is Impact Factor of journal?
Impact Factor (IF)
The Impact Factor is based on two figures: One is the number of citations to a given journal over the previous two years (A).Another one is the number of research articles and review articles published by that journal over the same two-year period (B).
Impact Factor = A/B
How to Find journal Impact Factor
Generally, most of the journals use these two figures (A) and (B) to calculate the Impact Factor. Let us calculate the Impact Factor for a particular journal for the year 2018.
Impact Factor(IF-2018) = A/B
A -> The number of times that all items published in that journal in 2016 and 2017 were cited by indexed publications during 2018.
B -> The total number of “citable items” published by that journal in 2016 and 2017.
For Example,
A=1298(number of times that all items published in that journal in 2016 and 2017)
B=541(The total number of “citable items” published by that journal in 2016 and 2017)
Then the Impact factor of the Journal should be (1298/541)= 2.40 IF.
How H-Index is calculated?
The h-index is a factor determining both the quantity and quality of a scientist’s research output.
The h- index is based on a list of publications ranked in descending order by the number of actions these publications received.
The value of (h) is equal to the number of papers (N) in the list that has N or more citations.
For example,
An author with 10 papers, where 5(N) papers were cited 5(N) times each one the h-index is 5.
If 8(N) papers were cited 8(N) times each one then the h-index is 8.
Hope, This will help you to find how the Journals and abstract indexing sites calculate Impact Factor(JIF) for a publication and H-Index for an author.