Are there good alternatives for the “Impact Factor” algorithm?
• Gianluca Castelnuovo, Ph.D.,Psy.D and Researcher in Clinical Psychology • 28824, Verbania, Italy. Clinical Psychology Lab, San Giuseppe Hospital, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano The impact factor represents a poor measure of the importance of an individual paper taking into account that 80% of a journals impact factor is determined by 20% of the papers published. In the last years a lot of new indexes has been created to provide alternatives for the IF algorithm: the Sevinc’s proposal of retouching the IF not considering the number of self citations in the calculation is a good example of different option. Van Leeuwen and Moed have developed an alternative journal impact measure, the Journal to Field Impact Score (JFIS), providing solutions to biases incurred in 4 areas (“non-citable” items included in the numerator of the IF calculation; the relative distribution of research articles; technical notes and reviews, different citing behavior across subject fields; and the fixed two-
