Evaluation of Indian physics research on journal impact factor and citations count: A comparative study

This paper evaluates citations performance of 1101 Indian physics research papers published in 29 high impact physics journals in 1997. The evaluation is based on citations won by these papers within six years of publication. The purpose is to verify to what extent research evaluation based on journal impact factor can be considered objective and fair. The study finds that journal impact factor is not a surrogate to citations. Nearly 12 % of papers in high impact journals did win even a single citation within six years of their publication. Secondly papers winning high range of citations per paper were published in a wide range of impact factor journals. The conclusion is that although impact factor is not a guarantee to citations but publication in high impact journals does improve the probability of winning citations. The higher the impact factor the greater their citations probability. The nationally and internationally collaborated papers have greater chances of winning high citations than the non-collaborative ones. 1