title: [SOME CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF THE IMPACT FACTOR OF SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS].
abstract: The reason of higher number of citations of some articles is discussed. Some considerations about the journals' impact factor, its merits and its pitfalls are also made. Scientific journals' impact factor, popularized by the Institute for Scientific Information, has become an objective parameter for authors' evaluation and also for institutions and other related circumstances. There is no reason for the impact factor's gap between some English journals and those written in other languages. English journals probably benefit of the "Mathew's effect", according to which eminent scientists are more rewarded by similar contributions than others less known. It is paradoxical that most of the major achievements of our age do not appear among the 100 most cited articles. There is no homogeneity among all the articles appearing in each scientific journal: half of the articles are cited ten times more than the other half. However, those articles cited 0 times are credited like the better ones. Each article should be evaluated by its own citations, which would be its impact factor; the authors should be evaluated by their H index.
authors.affiliation: Hospital Universitario Sant Joan d'Alacant.. angelesfrnc@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Ángeles
authors.initials: Á
authors.lastname: Franco-López
authors.affiliation: IBIOMED, Instituto de Biomedicina, Universidad de León.. angelesfrnc@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: González-Gallego
authors.affiliation: Universidad Miguel Hernández, Alicante.. angelesfrnc@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sanz-Valero
authors.affiliation: IBIOMED, Instituto de Biomedicina, Universidad de León.. angelesfrnc@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: María Jesús
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Tuñón
authors.affiliation: Hospital Universitario La Paz, Madrid.. angelesfrnc@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Abelardo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: García-De-Lorenzo
authors.affiliation: IBIOMED, Instituto de Biomedicina, Universidad de León. Miembro de la Real Academia de Medicina de Valladolid, España.. angelesfrnc@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Jesús M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Culebras
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D055811:Journal Impact Factor; D007802:Language; D052756:Nutritional Sciences; D010506:Periodicals as Topic