The article "Show me the Data" in The Journal of Cell Biology, Vol. 179, no. 6, Dec 2007 the authers' discussed the impact factor data that are gathered and sold by Thomson Scientific (formerly the Institute of Scientific Information, or ISI) and which have a strong influence on the scientific community, affecting decisions on where to publish, whom to promote or hire (1), the success of grant applications (2), and even salary bonuses (3).
The impact factor for a journal in a particular year is declared to be a measure of the average number of times a paper published in the previous two years was cited during the year in question. For example, the 2006 impact factor is the average number of times a paper published in 2004 or 2005 was cited in 2006. There are, however, some quirks about impact factor calculations that have been pointed out by others....
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