The Impact Factor as a Measuring Tool of the Prestige of the Journals in Research Assessment in Mathematics
Open accessAbstract
The (2-year) Impact Factor of Thomson-Reuters (IF) has become the fundamental tool for analysing the scientific production of academic researchers in a lot of countries. In this article we show that this index and the ordering criterion obtained by using it are highly unstable in the case of mathematics, to the extent that sometimes no reliability can be assigned to its use. We explain the reasons of this behaviour by the specific properties of the mathematical journals and publications, attending mainly the point of view of the researchers in pure mathematics. Using the Journal Citation Report list of journals as a source of information, we analyse the stability in the position of the mathematical journals—the so-called rank-normalized impact factor—compared with journals in applied physics and microbiology during the period 2002–12. Due to the lack of stability of the position of the journals of mathematics in these lists, we propose a ‘cumulative index’ that fits better the characteristics of mathematical journals. The computation of this index uses the values of the IF of the journals in previous years, providing in this way a more stable indicator.
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The short two-year citation time window of JIF is even more obvious when applying JIF in subject fields where citations mature slower or are delayed, as in Mathematics, Social Sciences and Humanities.
“This issue is even more obvious when applying JIF in subject fields where citations mature slower or are delayed, as in Mathematics, Social Sciences and Humanities [26,46,224,229].”
From Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World (2021) · cites this paper as [229]
JIF shows a certain level of discrimination against less popular publication types that, in certain disciplines, are as important as original research articles.
“In this way, JIF also shows a certain level of discrimination against less popular publication types that, in certain disciplines, are as important as original research articles [2,26,45,46,224,225,229].”
From Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World (2021) · cites this paper as [229]
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- Authors
- Ferrer-Sapena, A., Sánchez-Pérez, E. A., Peset, F., González, L.-M., & Aleixandre-Benavent, R.
- Affiliations
- Universitat Politècnica de València (ES)
- Corresponding author
- Ferrer-Sapena, Antonia
- Venue
- Research Evaluation
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2016-03-25
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 306-314
- ISSN
- 0958-2029 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-5449
- OpenAlex
- W2309934472
- Cited by
- 27
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 4
- FWCI
- 4.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Research Evaluation (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DIGITAL.CSIC (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)) (submittedVersion)
- HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
- RiuNet (Universitat Politècnica de València) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Web visibility and informetrics
- Keywords
- impact factor, journal prestige, research evaluation, mathematics journals, pure mathematics, Journal Citation Reports, cumulative index, bibliometric analysis
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