Cataract and refractive surgery: reflecting on journal impact factors and influence.

摘要

Each year, the annual Journal Impact Factors (JIFs) published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) are awaited with almost equal amounts of trepidation and anticipation by editors of peer-reviewed journals. Since the JIF is widely acknowledged as 1 key indicator of a journal's quality,1-4 a significant rise or fall on the JIF-ranked table can affect journal prestige and may influence a variety of quality measurements such as subscription figures or the number and quality of submitted manuscripts. The ISI JIF is calculated for each year by establishing the number of citations in that year to articles published in the preceding 2 years and dividing this figure by the total number of substantive articles published in the same 2-year period. The 2004 JIF value for the Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery (JCRS) is 1.937.5 In a year in which many ophthalmic journals experienced a reduction in their JIF, this is an improvement on the 2003 JIF (1.877) and cements a high-ranking mean JIF of 2.013 for the journal during the period 1999 to 2004.