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Fortnightly Review: How can impact factors be improved?

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Garfield, Eugene·1996·BMJ

Abstract

Impact factors are widely used to rank and evaluate journals. They are also often used inappropriately as surrogates in evaluation exercises. The inventor of the Science Citation Index warns against the indiscriminate use of these data. Fourteen year cumulative impact data for 10 leading medical journals provide a quantitative indicator of their long term influence. In the final analysis, impact simply reflects the ability of journals and editors to attract the best papers available.

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Research works printed but not linked: 12

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Metadata

Authors
Garfield, E.
Venue
BMJ
Publisher
BMJ
Published
1996-08-17
Volume
313
Issue
7054
Pages
411-413
ISSN
  • 0007-1447 (ISSN-L)
  • 0959-8138
  • 1468-5833
OpenAlex
W17751427
Cited by
484
References
0
FWCI
18.65
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green
Licence
www.bmj.com/company/legal-information/terms-conditions/legal-information/tdm-licencepolicy (tdm)

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Fortnightly Review: How can impact factors be improved? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1136/bmj.313.7054.411
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Garfield, E. (1996). Fortnightly Review: How can impact factors be improved? BMJ. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7054.411

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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