Evaluating scientific journals : A critical analysis of Journal Impact Factor: a measure used in citation analysis

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to make a critical analysis of Journal Impact Factor JIF. JIF is today the most widespread quantitative measure for evaluating scientific journals. Although it is internationally used and is considered authoritarian many problems have been observed. This has led to that the validity of JIF has been questioned. To identify JIFs limitations the following issues have been raised: Which are the problems with citation analysis? What criticisms have been directed towards Journal Impact Factor as a measure for evaluating scientific journals? The theoretical framework consists of theories about citation behaviour and a discussion about the characteristics of a scientific journal. In order to answer our questions a compilation of earlier and contemporary research about citation analysis and JIF has been conducted. The result has been divided into two parts; citation analysis and JIF. Since JIF is a measure based on citation rates, an understanding of the problems surrounding citation analysis is a necessity to get a complete picture of JIF and its limitations. In the part about JIF an identification and discussion about the specific problems surrounding the measure takes place. The result shows that the main problems concerning citation analysis are that there exist different citer motivations and citation practice among scholars and disciplines which makes it hard to draw any conclusions about what citations may represent. The main problems concerning JIF are that some journals are favoured because of publication language, publication rate, document types, audience and the research process within disciplines. Despite its problems JIF can be regarded as a valid measure for evaluating scientific journals.Uppsatsnivå: