Skip to main content

Latest Journal Impact Factors (2016) now available

What is a Journal Impact Factor?

An impact factor is a measurement looking at the average number of citations articles in a particular journal receives. 

It is calculated by:

The number of times that all items published in a journal in the previous two years (e.g. 2014 & 2015) were cited by indexed publications during the year of interest (e.g. 2016)

divided by

The total number of "citable items" published by that journal in those two years (e.g. 2014 & 2015)

Finding a Journal Impact Factor



Remember - not all journals are indexed by the Journal Citation Reports, so not all journals have an impact factor.
  • You will then see the Journal Profile, which includes the Impact Factor:

 Find the highest impact journal in your area

  • Click on Journals By Rank
  • Click 'Select Category' and select the subject area closet to your own:
  • Click Submit at the bottom of the screen.
  • Scroll down to see the journals within the category, ranked by impact factor:


Responsible use of journal impact factors:

The University of Leicester has signed the The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which includes the following advice for researchers:

- When involved in committees making decisions about funding, hiring, tenure, or promotion, make assessments based on scientific content rather than publication metrics.

- Wherever appropriate, cite primary literature in which observations are first reported rather than reviews in order to give credit where credit is due.

- Use a range of article metrics and indicators on personal/supporting statements, as evidence of the impact of individual published articles and other research outputs.


- Challenge research assessment practices that rely inappropriately on Journal Impact Factors and promote and teach best practice that focuses on the value and influence of specific research outputs.


Popular posts from this blog

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar if you have a Google Account. Go to Google Scholar and sign into your Google Account. Conduct your search. Click on the Star icon (Save) under each reference you want to export. Then click on My Library in the top, right of the screen. Select all the references and click on the Export option: Click the Star/Save Icon Choose Export Option To Export into EndNote Choose the EndNote option. Open the EndNote file that is created. The references should automatically import into EndNote. To Export into RefWorks Choose the RefMan option. Save the RIS file that is created. Login to your RefWorks account. Click on the plus (+) button. Choose Import References. Add the RIS file you just saved. Set the file import option to RIS - Reference Manager. Click import and your references will be imported. --- Good Practice Tip: Always check that all the reference information you need has been

Searching ABS Journals in Business Source Premier

In Business and Management Studies, researchers undertaking a literature review sometimes search across a defined group of journals. This is a way of focusing the literature search to make the results more relevant to the questions in hand. Groups are often chosen from the Association of Business Schools (ABS)'s  Academic Journal Guide . Read more how about how they put together the guide here . There are several ways to search across ABS journals. Here is how to do it in Business Source Premier, a leading literature database for this subject area.  1.     Login into the ABS journal guide. If you have never used it before you will need to create an account. 2.     You can use the guide to draw up a group of journals either by using the Rankings information or the Fields. Fields divides up the journals into categories of research focus e.g. Accounting, Finance etc. In this example we will use the Fields. The field we are interested is ‘Operations Research and Marketin

Advanced Search Tip: Proximity (Adjacency) Searching

Proximity (Adjacency) Searching vs Phrase Searching When you're searching literature databases you might want to find a phrase. The easiest way to do this is to put the phrase in "speech marks". E.g. "heart disease" This will find that exact phrase - with the words next to each other in that order. BUT... You may be interested in variations on that phrase e.g. heart disease, disease of the heart, diseases of the heart, diseases of the human heart. In that case it might be better to use a proximity/adjacency search - this allows you to find one keyword next to another. Or one keyword within a specified number of words of the other keyword. When using a proximity search the keywords can be in any order. Different Databases Use Different Proximity Operators In Ovid Medline : heart adj disease finds the word heart next to the word disease, in that order.    (This is the same as searching for the phrase, of course) heart adj2 disease fin