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Does anyone know the current (or any past) impact factor of JAPMA as suggested by the ISI?

I also read somewhere that it has the highest value of all podiatric journals - is this true and does anyone have a reference for this?

Thanks in advance

Ian

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Ian,

The IF for 2007 is calculated as:

A = the number of times articles published in the journal in 2005-6 were cited in indexed journals during 2007

B = the number of "citable items" (articles, reviews, proceedings or notes, excluding editorials and letters-to-the-Editor) published in 2005-6

2007 IF= A/B

Only two foot-related journal are tracked by Thomson ISI (the company that "owns" the IF), and their 2007 IFs are:

JAPMA: 0.407
Foot and Ankle International: 0.956

The new journal, Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, doesn't yet have an IF as it hasn't been published for a long enough period of time.

IFs are a seriously flawed measure of journal quality, influence or impact. There have been several papers which discuss this, the best being by Per Seglen in the BMJ (link). The key flaws of the IF are as follows (taken from Seglen):

Journal impact factors are not statistically representative of individual journal articles

Journal impact factors correlate poorly with actual citations of individual articles

Authors use many criteria other than impact when submitting to journals

Citations to "non-citable" items are erroneously included in the database

Self citations are not corrected for

Review articles are heavily cited and inflate the impact factor of journals

Long articles collect many citations and give high journal impact factors

Short publication lag allows many short term journal self citations and gives a high journal impact factor

Citations in the national language of the journal are preferred by the journal's authors

Selective journal self citation: articles tend to preferentially cite other articles in the same journal

Coverage of the database is not complete

Books are not included in the database as a source for citations

Database has an English language bias

Database is dominated by American publications

Journal set in database may vary from year to year

Impact factor is a function of the number of references per article in the research field

Research fields with literature that rapidly becomes obsolete are favoured

Impact factor depends on dynamics (expansion or contraction) of the research field

Small research fields tend to lack journals with high impact

Relations between fields (clinical v basic research, for example) strongly determine the journal impact factor

Citation rate of article determines journal impact, but not vice versa

Despite these flaws, researchers will probably still aim for so-called "high-impact" journals until a better system of ranking them is developed.

__________________
Cheers,

Hylton

Hylton B. Menz, PhD
Associate Professor and Reader
NHMRC Australian Clinical Research Fellow
Director, Musculoskeletal Research Centre
La Trobe University

Hylton,

Thats a massive help - I appreciate it

Ian

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My location

I do not know a reference but fully agree with your statement.
It has been a uniting force as well a source of information and the Podiatrist who does not read it regularly is truly at a disadvantage.

I do not know a reference but fully agree with your statement.
It has been a uniting force as well a source of information and the Podiatrist who does not read it regularly is truly at a disadvantage.