Weighted Impact Factor (WIF) for assessing the quality of scientific journals

TL;DR

This paper proposes a weighted impact factor that considers the prestige of citing journals to improve the accuracy of scientific journal rankings.

Contribution

It introduces a weighted impact factor that accounts for citation quality, enhancing journal evaluation beyond traditional impact factors.

Findings

Weighted impact factor correlates better with journal quality.

Analysis shows improved ranking accuracy with the new metric.

High correlation with other journal evaluation indicators.

Abstract

Nowadays impact factor is the significant indicator for journal evaluation. In impact factor calculation is used number of all citations to journal, regardless of the prestige of cited journals, however, scientific units (paper, researcher, journal or scientific organization) cited by journals with high impact factor or researchers with high Hirsch index are more important than objects cited by journals without impact factor or unknown researcher. In this paper was offered weighted impact factor for getting more accurate rankings for journals, which consider not only quantity of citations, but also quality of citing journals. Correlation coefficients among different indicators for journal evaluation: impact factors by Thomson Scientific, weighted impact factors offered by different researchers, average and medians of all citing journals impact factors and 5-year impact factors were analysed.