Journal of Scientometric Research, 2018, 7, 2, 94-106.
DOI: 10.5530/jscires.7.2.15
Published: August 2018
Type: Research Article
Ramiz M Aliguliyev, Narmin A Adigozalova*
Institute of Information Technology, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences. 9A, B. Vahabzade Street, AZ1141 Baku, AZERBAIJAN.
Abstract:
Introduction: The publication of numerous periodicals have led to the rapid growth of scientific information in recent periods. There emerged a need to evaluate the quality of those periodicals and to review their impact on other sectors for the purpose of the management of large-volume information. IF indicator of a journal is based on Web of Science (WoS) database and presented by Journal Citation Reports annually. Despite the broad use of Impact Factor (IF) in the assessment of scientific journals in last 60 years, it has been subject to critique. Among its limitations, the disregard of the prestige of a citing source and the consideration of the two-year period only are emphasized. The consideration of self citation in methodological aspects of index computation, the low comparability among resources and English as the primary language of publications create challenges in assessing the quality of citation. Method: Numerous researchers have proposed various approaches to the evaluation of scientific journals. Their reflections are comprised while considering the prestige of obtained citation. Modified versions of the IF have been suggested in recent years. The primary aim of those is to eliminate the limitations indicated by IF researchers. The most noteworthy among these limitations is that the indicator ignores the prestige of citing source. Conclusion: For this purpose, a weighted IF is proposed in the article which takes into consideration the prestige of a citing source. As a measure of the prestige of the source – the indicators of WoS and Scopus databases (5IF and SJR indicators) are selected. In the article comparison of proposed weighted IF with other indicators carried out on various metrics. Experiment results demonstraed that correlation between IF and weighted IF is not so high. It means that consideration of citing source prestige is important.