© 2001 by European Society of Cardiology
Copyright © 2001, European Society of Cardiology
Impact factor of Cardiovascular Research in 2000: all time high!
aDepartment of Medical Physiology, University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands
bEditorial Office of Cardiovascular Research, Academic Medical Center, Room J-127, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +31-30-253-8923; fax: +31-30-253-9036 t.opthof{at}med.uu.nl
accepted 7 February 2001
 |
Impact factor in 2000 |
|---|
 Top Impact factor in 2000 Potency for the futureReferences |
|---|
Fig. 1 shows that Cardiovascular Research will score an all time high impact factor of 3.59 in the year 2000. This impact factor reflects the citations during the year 2000 to the contents of our journal in the years 1998 and 1999. Although the official impact factor of the Institute for Scientific Information will only be communicated at the end of 2001, the accuracy of our previous estimates may be appreciated from a comparison of the solid and dotted lines in Fig. 1.
|
In Fig. 2 we show the impact of the contents of Cardiovascular Research of the years 1995 till 1999 during the years since publication. This graph differs from the usual way of expressing citation frequency, but has the advantage that it permits easier comparison of the impact of consecutive year volumes of the journal. Fig. 2 shows an optimum for the citation frequency of the 1995 contents in year 5 since publication (i.e. during 1999) and in year 4 for the 1996 contents (i.e. also during 1999) [1]. The impact factor is a mixture of citation during year 3 of what was published two years before and of citation during year 2 of what was published one year before with year one as the year of publication. Thus, the optimal citation frequency is obtained during years that no longer have significance for the calculation of the official impact factor. For the contents of the more recent years (1997 till 1999) the optimal citation frequency cannot yet be determined. Fig. 2 shows also that the contents of 1999 were more frequently cited during year 1 (1999) and year 2 since publication (2000) than the contents of any of the preceding years. Since citation of the contents of the year 1999 during the year 2001 will be the more important parameter for the impact factor of 2001, the editors, authors and reviewers can be confident that a new all time high will be scored in 2001 !
|
|
Potency for the future |
|---|
|
TopImpact factor in 2000Potency for the futureReferences |
|---|
Last year we acknowledged the help of many thousands of our reviewers who helped us with the editorial decision process over the last years [2]. Reviewers play an important role in assisting editors to make priority decisions [3]. We showed previously that an artifical procedure by which the contents of the journal in 1997 and 1998 were reduced by excluding papers on the basis of reviewer's priorities assigned to the individual papers, would have led to an increase of the impact factor in 1999 by 40% (from 3.09 to 4.33) with an (unacceptable) reduction of the contents of the journal from 100% to 24% [4].
Fig. 3 shows the result of the same procedure applied to the 1998 and 1999 contents for the impact factor in 2000 (see legend for further details). Obviously, the impact factor would have increased from 3.59 (Fig. 3, right ordinate, but see also Fig. 1) to 5.10. At the same time the contents would have been reduced from 100% to 28%. Fig. 3 shows that an impact factor of 5.10 indicates some kind of maximum in 2000. Fig. 4 compares the effect of reviewer's priority on the impact factors of 1999 and 2000. Both curves are separated by 0.50 (3.09 for 1999 and 3.59 for 2000) when the complete contents are considered and by 0.77 when only papers with 100% priority are considered (4.33 for 1999 and 5.10 for 2000). Both curves indicate that the advice of reviewer's is very helpful when editors aim at improving the impact factor of their journal. The potency of our journal in terms of impact factor is getting closer and closer, but not yet equal to the impact factor of the three top journals in the cardiovascular category with top impact factors between 7.00 and 9.50. Bridging this gap further remains our aim, but we can only succeed when our authors permit us to select their very best work, as we stated previously [4].
|
|
|
References |
|---|
|
TopImpact factor in 2000Potency for the futureReferences |
|---|
- Moed H.F, Van Leeuwen Th.N, Reedijk J. A new classification system to describe the ageing of scientific journals and their impact factors. J Document (1998) 54:387–419.[CrossRef]
- Opthof T, Coronel R, Janse M.J. on behalf of the Editorial Team. Where do our reviewers come from? Cardiovasc Res (2000) 46:1–13.
[Free Full Text] - Coronel R, Opthof T. The role of the reviewer in editorial decision-making. Cardiovasc Res (1999) 43:261–264.
[Abstract/Free Full Text] - Opthof T, Coronel R, Janse M.J. on behalf of the Editorial Team. Reviewer's recommendations predict impact: why you have to send us your very best work? Cardiovasc Res (2000) 48:1–3.
[Free Full Text]
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  T. Opthof, R. Coronel, and M. J Janse Submissions and impact factor 1997-2001: Focus on Sweden Cardiovasc Res, August 1, 2001; 51(2): 202 - 204. [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||