The impact factor: Your job may depend on it-but do you know what it is?

摘要

"Impact factor" is a term familiar to most people in the medical and scientific community, but despite its spread and often obsessive use, few fully understand its meaning or implications or, indeed, the -oversy that surrounds it. Here William Russell-Edu, librarian at the European Institute of Oncology, i, explains what this influential index actually measures and how it is derived, and looks into some e many problems associated with it - in particular its misuse as a measure of an author's worth.