IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucm/doicae/1806.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pros and cons of the impact factor in a rapidly changing digital world

Author

Listed:
  • Michael McAleer

    ( Department of Quantitative Finance National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan and Econometric Institute Erasmus School of Economics Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Department of Quantitative Economics Complutense University of Madrid, Spain And Institute of Advanced Sciences Yokohama National University, Japan.)

  • Judit Oláh

    (Faculty of Economics and Business Institute of Applied Informatics and Logistics University of Debrecen, Hungar.)

  • József Popp

    ( Faculty of Economics and Business Institute of Sectoral Economics and Methodology University of Debrecen, Hungary.)

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to present arguments for and against the use of the Impact Factor (IF) in a rapidly changing digital world. The paper discusses the calculation of IF, as well as the pros and cons of IF. Editorial policies that affect IF are examined, and the merits of open access online publishing are presented. Scientific quality and the IF dilemma are analysed, and alternative measures of impact and quality are evaluated. The San Francisco declaration on research assessment is also discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael McAleer & Judit Oláh & József Popp, 2018. "Pros and cons of the impact factor in a rapidly changing digital world," Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE 2018-06, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucm:doicae:1806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/46456/1/1806.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kodrzycki Yolanda K. & Yu Pingkang, 2006. "New Approaches to Ranking Economics Journals," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-44, August.
    2. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer & Les Oxley, 2011. "Great Expectatrics: Great Papers, Great Journals, Great Econometrics," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(6), pages 583-619.
    3. Chia-Lin Chang & Esfandiar Maasoumi & Michael McAleer, 2016. "Robust Ranking of Journal Quality: An Application to Economics," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 50-97, January.
    4. E. Garfield & I. H. Sher, 1963. "New factors in the evaluation of scientific literature through citation indexing," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(3), pages 195-201, July.
    5. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2015. "Bibliometric Rankings of Journals Based on the Thomson Reuters Citations Database," Journal of Reviews on Global Economics, Lifescience Global, vol. 4, pages 120-125.
    6. Chang, Chia-Lin & McAleer, Michael & Oxley, Les, 2013. "Coercive journal self citations, impact factor, Journal Influence and Article Influence," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 190-197.
    7. Gerhard Knothe, 2006. "Comparative citation analysis of duplicate or highly related publications," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(13), pages 1830-1839, November.
    8. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & Oscar Volij, 2004. "The Measurement of Intellectual Influence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(3), pages 963-977, May.
    9. Michael H. MacRoberts & Barbara R. MacRoberts, 1989. "Problems of citation analysis: A critical review," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 40(5), pages 342-349, September.
    10. Mounir Errami & Harold Garner, 2008. "A tale of two citations," Nature, Nature, vol. 451(7177), pages 397-399, January.
    11. Per O Seglen, 1992. "How representative is the journal impact factor?," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(3), pages 143-149, December.
    12. George A. Lozano & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2012. "The weakening relationship between the impact factor and papers' citations in the digital age," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(11), pages 2140-2145, November.
    13. Editors The, 2008. "Content," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-1, July.
    14. Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2010. "The impact factor's Matthew Effect: A natural experiment in bibliometrics," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(2), pages 424-427, February.
    15. Liebowitz, S J & Palmer, J P, 1984. "Assessing the Relative Impacts of Economic Journals," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 77-88, March.
    16. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S., 2013. "Some modifications to the SNIP journal impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 272-285.
    17. Editors The, 2008. "Content," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 2(2), pages 1-2, January.
    18. Éric Archambault & Vincent Larivière, 2009. "History of the journal impact factor: Contingencies and consequences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 79(3), pages 635-649, June.
    19. Lutz Bornmann & Irina Nast & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2008. "Do editors and referees look for signs of scientific misconduct when reviewing manuscripts? A quantitative content analysis of studies that examined review criteria and reasons for accepting and rejec," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 77(3), pages 415-432, December.
    20. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer & Les Oxley, 2012. "Journal Impact Factor, Eigenfactor, Journal Influence and Article Influence," KIER Working Papers 822, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    21. David N. Laband, 1990. "Is There Value-Added from the Review Process in Economics?: Preliminary Evidence from Authors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 341-352.
    22. Declan Butler, 2008. "Free journal-ranking tool enters citation market," Nature, Nature, vol. 451(7174), pages 6-6, January.
    23. Editors The, 2008. "Content," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 3(3), pages 1-1, December.
    24. Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2010. "The impact factor's Matthew Effect: A natural experiment in bibliometrics," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(2), pages 424-427, February.
    25. Steve Lawrence, 2001. "Free online availability substantially increases a paper's impact," Nature, Nature, vol. 411(6837), pages 521-521, May.
    26. George A. Lozano & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2012. "The weakening relationship between the impact factor and papers' citations in the digital age," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(11), pages 2140-2145, November.
    27. Jeacle, Ingrid & Carter, Chris, 2011. "In TripAdvisor we trust: Rankings, calculative regimes and abstract systems," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 293-309.
    28. Liwen Vaughan & Debora Shaw, 2003. "Bibliographic and Web citations: What is the difference?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(14), pages 1313-1322, December.
    29. Erjen Van Nierop, 2009. "Why do statistics journals have low impact factors?," Statistica Neerlandica, Netherlands Society for Statistics and Operations Research, vol. 63(1), pages 52-62, February.
    30. Editors The, 2008. "Content," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 1-1, November.
    31. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan Eck, 2013. "Source normalized indicators of citation impact: an overview of different approaches and an empirical comparison," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(3), pages 699-716, September.
    32. Jerome K. Vanclay, 2012. "Impact factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 211-238, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jerome K. Vanclay, 2012. "Impact factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 211-238, August.
    2. Lutz Bornmann & Alexander Butz & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2018. "What are the top five journals in economics? A new meta-ranking," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(6), pages 659-675, February.
    3. Pardeep Sud & Mike Thelwall, 2014. "Evaluating altmetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1131-1143, February.
    4. Embiya Celik & Nuray Gedik & Güler Karaman & Turgay Demirel & Yuksel Goktas, 2014. "Mistakes encountered in manuscripts on education and their effects on journal rejections," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(3), pages 1837-1853, March.
    5. Louis Mesnard, 2010. "On Hochberg et al.’s “The tragedy of the reviewer commons”," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(3), pages 903-917, September.
    6. Wohlrabe, Klaus, 2016. "Taking the Temperature: A Meta-Ranking of Economics Journals," MPRA Paper 68933, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Mario Paolucci & Francisco Grimaldo, 2014. "Mechanism change in a simulation of peer review: from junk support to elitism," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 99(3), pages 663-688, June.
    8. Lutz Bornmann & Christophe Weymuth & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2010. "A content analysis of referees’ comments: how do comments on manuscripts rejected by a high-impact journal and later published in either a low- or high-impact journal differ?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 83(2), pages 493-506, May.
    9. Drahomira Herrmannova & Robert M. Patton & Petr Knoth & Christopher G. Stahl, 2018. "Do citations and readership identify seminal publications?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 239-262, April.
    10. Lutz Bornmann & Markus Wolf & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2012. "Closed versus open reviewing of journal manuscripts: how far do comments differ in language use?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(3), pages 843-856, June.
    11. Olgica Nedić & Aleksandar Dekanski, 2016. "Priority criteria in peer review of scientific articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(1), pages 15-26, April.
    12. Lutz Bornmann, 2013. "Research Misconduct—Definitions, Manifestations and Extent," Publications, MDPI, vol. 1(3), pages 1-12, October.
    13. Drivas, Kyriakos & Kremmydas, Dimitris, 2020. "The Matthew effect of a journal's ranking," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(4).
    14. Peter Sjögårde & Fereshteh Didegah, 2022. "The association between topic growth and citation impact of research publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1903-1921, April.
    15. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2015. "Bibliometric Rankings of Journals Based on the Thomson Reuters Citations Database," Journal of Reviews on Global Economics, Lifescience Global, vol. 4, pages 120-125.
    16. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2019. "Modeling Latent Carbon Emission Prices for Japan: Theory and Practice," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-21, November.
    17. Akram Osman & Naomie Salim & Faisal Saeed, 2019. "Quality dimensions features for identifying high-quality user replies in text forum threads using classification methods," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-26, May.
    18. Cristiano Varin & Manuela Cattelan & David Firth, 2016. "Statistical modelling of citation exchange between statistics journals," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 179(1), pages 1-63, January.
    19. Lanu Kim & Jason H. Portenoy & Jevin D. West & Katherine W. Stovel, 2020. "Scientific journals still matter in the era of academic search engines and preprint archives," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(10), pages 1218-1226, October.
    20. Jie Zhao & Jianfei Wang & Suping Fang & Peiquan Jin, 2018. "Towards Sustainable Development of Online Communities in the Big Data Era: A Study of the Causes and Possible Consequence of Voting on User Reviews," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-18, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Impact Factor; Quality of research; Pros and Cons; Implications; Digital world; Editorial policies; Open access online publishing; SCIE; SSCI.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucm:doicae:1806. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Águeda González Abad (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feucmes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.