Promotion and tenure decisions are often related to the quality of research. One quantitative way to measure this is to consider the prestige of the journal in which an article has been published. Prestige is indicated by the journal's impact factor, which is a ratio of how many times a journal has been cited (excluding self cites) over a particular period of time. It is also determined by a journal's acceptance rate or how many articles are accepted for publication.
Impact Factor:
| A= total cites in a particular year (e.g., 2010) |
| B= 2010 cites to articles published in 2008-2009 (this is a subset of A) |
| C= number of articles published in 2008-2009 |
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A= B/C = 2010 impact factor
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Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is the most authoritative resource of impact factors, which we do not subscribe to at UWF. However, a free web site, Eigenfactor, evaluates scholarly journals and other publications in the natural and social sciences using the entire citation network in JCR.
Many sources publish earlier years of impact factor data, which can be easily accessed via the Internet. Examples are ScienceWatchand SCImago:
Scimago Journal Rank
Impact factors are often provided on journal web sites:
