title: Journal Impact Factor: Do the Numerator and Denominator Need Correction?
abstract: To correct the incongruence of document types between the numerator and denominator in the traditional impact factor (IF), we make a corresponding adjustment to its formula and present five corrective IFs: IFTotal/Total, IFTotal/AREL, IFAR/AR, IFAREL/AR, and IFAREL/AREL. Based on a survey of researchers in the fields of ophthalmology and mathematics, we obtained the real impact ranking of sample journals in the minds of peer experts. The correlations between various IFs and questionnaire score were analyzed to verify their journal evaluation effects. The results show that it is scientific and reasonable to use five corrective IFs for journal evaluation for both ophthalmology and mathematics. For ophthalmology, the journal evaluation effects of the five corrective IFs are superior than those of traditional IF: the corrective effect of IFAR/AR is the best, IFAREL/AR is better than IFTotal/Total, followed by IFTotal/AREL, and IFAREL/AREL. For mathematics, the journal evaluation effect of traditional IF is superior than those of the five corrective IFs: the corrective effect of IFTotal/Total is best, IFAREL/AR is better than IFTotal/AREL and IFAREL/AREL, and the corrective effect of IFAR/AR is the worst. In conclusion, not all disciplinary journal IF need correction. The results in the current paper show that to correct the IF of ophthalmologic journals may be valuable, but it seems to be meaningless for mathematic journals.
authors.affiliation: Henan Research Center for Science Journals, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China.|Periodicals Publishing House, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China.
authors.forename: Xue-Li
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Periodicals Publishing House, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China.|Management Institute, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China.
authors.forename: Shuang-Shuang
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Gai
authors.affiliation: Periodicals Publishing House, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China.|Management Institute, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D055811:Journal Impact Factor; D008433:Mathematics; D009885:Ophthalmology; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000145:classification / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States