Impact factor of the journal as quantitative measure for quality of journal: pros and cons

Initially, Impact Factor was used as a means to rank the quality of journal to select scientific journals for the library holdings. Since 1960s, it has been used as a measure for quality and the tool for evaluation of journal’s scientific worthiness. It is quantitative indicator for the quality of journal and measured as the ratio of frequency of citations to the number of articles published. It is heavily influenced by the date of publication, editorial policies, size and scope of journal, Institute of Scientific Information’s indexing focus, publication practices etc. Despite its merits, it has been criticized for its validity issues, liable to manipulation and misuse. Hence, use of the impact factor as a measure of quality of journal is not all in all and it needs to be carefully evaluated. It should be used along with other parameters like immediacy index, cited half life etc while assessing the popularity and scientific quality of information