Getting an impact factor is important, and for some journals it is downright crucial.
An impact factor might be the thing that sets you apart from other similar journals. It could also be the thing that puts you at the top! Because of that, making sure you take all the steps you can to get an impact factor is important.
In this article we’ll go over some things that you can do to get your impact factor and to improve it when you get it. Because getting an IF is a multifaceted task, and can include everything from submission standards to indexing, we’ll cover as much as we can here.
What is an impact factor?
Briefly, an impact factor (IF) is the yearly mean of citations of a journal. Clarivate calculates this number using data from the previous two years. Then, once a year, they update the values. Sometimes the numbers go up, sometimes down. But, as a general rule, the more often you’re cited, the bigger your impact factor. To learn about why an impact factor might be important to you and your journal, we encourage you to read our article on the subject.
Impact factors are often used as a metric for “how good” a journal is. There is a lot of discussion about whether or not this is the best metric for a journal, but because of the challenges in finding a standardized way to rank journals, impact factor remains top of the list.
But does this mean that a good IF is the only thing that matters? No, not at all. But because of it’s importance to your journal, you should make sure that you do what you can to maximize your chances of success.
Getting an impact factor
The actual process to get an impact factor isn’t that complicated. The first step is to submit the journal in question to Clarivate Analytics so that they can review it. After it gets accepted for coverage in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), or the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), the journal is eligible for its first IF three years after that. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that the journal will get it, only that it is eligible. There is more work to be done.
Standards
Standards are important to any journal. They are what ensures quality in the research that gets published. Proper standards include everything from editorial standards, to editing standards, to peer review standards. Post hoc, improving your visibility via indexing and social media can also matter.
Because so many factors can impact the end result of a submitted manuscript, it’s important to make sure that you have strong standards always.
Setting your publication schedule and sticking to it, making sure that bibliographic details are all present, citations (and more), are some of the details that need to be included. Because Clarivate reviews three consecutive issues (you will need to send these to them as they are published), this is critical. Getting an impact factor (and improving it) is affected by these things.
Peer review is, logically, extremely important. Making sure that you have a strong peer review process helps.
Citations and analysis
Your journal will be analyzed for citations. Clarivate will look at all citations from the journals that it already covers (somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20,000 journals).
Two other factors, the amount of self-citations (when authors cite their own work) and the citation records of contributing authors and editorial board members are also considered. This is of particular interest with newer journals that don’t have much of a citation history.
Making sure that you keep strict standards when it comes to citations can be important. You don’t want to get your application rejected and then have to wait a couple of years before you can resubmit again.
Diversity
An important thing to consider is whether or not your journal is global in scope. If your authors and editorial boards come from only one country, that isn’t going to help.
Making sure that you have academics from a wide range of institutions is important. Making sure that your authors come from all over the globe is also helpful.
It is important to keep in mind that Clarivate Analytics also covers the best regional journals, but this is also something to be carefully curated.
Getting a better impact factor
Getting a higher IF is also important. You don’t want to rest on your laurels. But it’s important that you do so in a way that is above board. Making sure that you grow your IF in a responsible and ethical way is important.
There are ways that an impact factor could be manipulated, but if discovered this could be enough to bury your journal. Be responsible and stick to your standards.
Getting a better impact factor hinges on a few different things. For example, the obvious place to start is to continue to grow as a journal. This means to get more submissions and citations. As your journal grows and its reputation improves, this will encourage a greater number of high-quality submissions. More high-quality research means more citations, and so the cycle continues.
Indexing
We’ve talked about the importance of indexing to your journal. Making sure that you get your journal indexed can have a major impact on the visibility of your journal, and this can actually have an impact on your IF.
Increases your journal’s authority and visibility can be a direct result of getting your journal indexed. With the ways that academic publishing has changed over the last 20 years, determining the trustworthiness of publications and their publishers has grown more challenging. Getting your journal indexed will help to establish your journal as being credible. Importantly, it gives your authors a sense of basic expectations that they can have when it comes to publishing in your journal.
Indexing is critical to improving the visibility of your journal, but you have other tools at your disposal—don’t forget about social media.
Open access vs. traditional publishing
There’s not a ton of data on this, but there is some data that indicates that publishing in open access gets more citations. Logically, if there are no barriers to access research, it is easier for researchers to cite it. This is especially true in cases where researchers come from academic institutions or regions of the world that simply do not have as many resources as the Global North. Keep in mind, one of the most famous academic journals in the world, Nature, is not an open access publisher.
Try to avoid drawing hard rules from apparent details, but definitely keep those things in mind!
Working on your impact factor
It’s a challenging path to walk. Impact factors are important, but aren’t also the only thing that you can work on to improve your journal’s reputation. In the future, we’ll go into more detail about other metrics, and how those can also be used to help your journal (and improve your impact factor as well)!