1. Not all Journals are Created Equal! Using Impact Factors to Assess the Impact of a Journal

2. Objectives: At the end of this talk, the participant will be able to:  Define Journal Indexation  Define Impact Factor (IF)  Explain how the impact factor relates to finding the "best" journal in which to publish.

3. Journal Indexation Indexation of a journal is considered a reflection of its quality. Indexed journals are considered to be of higher scientific quality as compared to non-indexed journals. Indexation of medical journals has become a debatable issue. Popular indexation services include MedLine, PubMed, EMBASE, SCOPUS, EBSCO Publishing's Electronic Databases, SCIRUS among others.

4. Why is this different? Based on law indexing (Shepard’s Citations) 1873 Subject indexes to scientific literature were in existence Garfield suggests that each article is given a code and all works that cited that article would be linked to the original article.

6. Journal Impact Factor Formula The number of times articles published in (2 years) were cited by indexed journals Total number of citable items (2 years)

7. In Simpler Terms The impact factor is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals.

8. Other Methods H Index (or H factor) Immediacy index

9. H Factor or H Index Index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. A scholar with an index of h has published h papers each of which has been cited by others at least h times. Serves as an alternative to more traditional journal impact factor metrics in the evaluation of the impact of the work of a particular researcher

10. How do Impact factors help you find the best journal in which to publish?

11. How do I find a journal impact factor? Use http://www.impactfactorsearch.com/

12. Activity: Find out the impact factor for the following journal titles