{"id":125,"date":"2017-02-10T22:15:17","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T22:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/chapter\/finding-a-journals-impact-factor\/"},"modified":"2018-01-19T11:38:20","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T11:38:20","slug":"finding-a-journals-impact-factor","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/chapter\/finding-a-journals-impact-factor\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding a Journal’s Impact Factor"},"content":{"raw":"\n

We mentioned earlier that our process is really one of elimination. In a world where information is plentiful, we can be a bit demanding about what counts as evidence. When it comes to research, one gating expectation can be that published academic research cited for a claim come from respected peer-reviewed journals.<\/p>\n

Consider this journal:
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Is it a journal that gives any authority to this article? Or is it just another web-based paper mill?<\/p>\n

Our first check is to see what the \u201cimpact factor\u201d of the journal is. This is a measure of the journal\u2019s influence in the academic community. While a flawed metric for assessing the relative importance of journals, it is a useful tool for quickly identifying journals which are not part of a known circle of academic discourse, or which are not peer-reviewed.<\/p>\n

We search Google for PLOS Medicine, and it pulls up an information card for us with an impact factor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Impact factor can go into the 30s, but we\u2019re using this as a quick elimination test, not a ranking, so we\u2019re happy with anything over 1. We still have work to do on this article, but it\u2019s worth keeping in the mix.<\/p>\n

What about this one?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In this case we get a result with a link to this journal at the top, but no card, as there is no registered impact factor for this journal:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Again, we stress that the article here may be excellent -- we don\u2019t know. Likewise, there are occasionally articles published in the most prestigious journals that are pure junk. Be careful in your use of impact factor -- a journal with an impact factor of 10 is not necessarily better than a journal with an impact factor of 3, especially if you are dealing with a niche subject.<\/p>\n

But in a quick and dirty analysis we have to say that the PLOS Medicine article is more trustworthy than the Journal of Obesity and Weight-loss Medication article. In fact, if you were deciding whether to reshare a story in your feed and the evidence for the story came from this Obesity journal, I\u2019d skip reposting it entirely.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n","rendered":"

We mentioned earlier that our process is really one of elimination. In a world where information is plentiful, we can be a bit demanding about what counts as evidence. When it comes to research, one gating expectation can be that published academic research cited for a claim come from respected peer-reviewed journals.<\/p>\n

Consider this journal:
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Is it a journal that gives any authority to this article? Or is it just another web-based paper mill?<\/p>\n

Our first check is to see what the \u201cimpact factor\u201d of the journal is. This is a measure of the journal\u2019s influence in the academic community. While a flawed metric for assessing the relative importance of journals, it is a useful tool for quickly identifying journals which are not part of a known circle of academic discourse, or which are not peer-reviewed.<\/p>\n

We search Google for PLOS Medicine, and it pulls up an information card for us with an impact factor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Impact factor can go into the 30s, but we\u2019re using this as a quick elimination test, not a ranking, so we\u2019re happy with anything over 1. We still have work to do on this article, but it\u2019s worth keeping in the mix.<\/p>\n

What about this one?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In this case we get a result with a link to this journal at the top, but no card, as there is no registered impact factor for this journal:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Again, we stress that the article here may be excellent — we don\u2019t know. Likewise, there are occasionally articles published in the most prestigious journals that are pure junk. Be careful in your use of impact factor — a journal with an impact factor of 10 is not necessarily better than a journal with an impact factor of 3, especially if you are dealing with a niche subject.<\/p>\n

But in a quick and dirty analysis we have to say that the PLOS Medicine article is more trustworthy than the Journal of Obesity and Weight-loss Medication article. In fact, if you were deciding whether to reshare a story in your feed and the evidence for the story came from this Obesity journal, I\u2019d skip reposting it entirely.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-125","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":103,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125\/revisions\/126"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/103"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}