Journal Evaluation for Indexing | Methodology

Procedure of Journal Evaluation

What is Impact Factor?

The impact factor (IF) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones (Wikipedia Definition). The impact factor is used to compare different journals within a certain field about publications. In any given year, the impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years. For example, if a journal has an impact factor of 3 in 2008, then its papers published in 2006 and 2007 received 3 citations each on average in 2008. 

How Impact Factor is calculated?

The calculation of impact factor provided by ''Scholar Article Journal Index" is done following single method/approach and or combination of methods described below depending on status, journal attributes and standards. Let us consider that we calculate impact factor for the year 2008 based on number of citations.   

A = the number of times that all items published in that journal in 2006 and 2007 were cited by indexed publications during 2008.
B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2006 and 2007.
So, 2008 impact factor = A/B.

New journals, which are indexed from their first published issue, will receive an impact factor after two years of indexing. In this case, the citations to the year prior to Volume 1, and the number of articles published in the year prior to Volume 1 are known zero values. Journals that are indexed starting with a volume other than the first volume will not get an impact factor until they have been indexed for three years.

However, in November 2007 the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) issued an official statement recommending "that journal impact factors are used only and cautiously for measuring and comparing the influence of entire journals, but not for the assessment of single papers, and certainly not for the assessment of researchers or research programmes".

Moreover, there are many consideration or requirement belong to this approach of impact factor calculation such as editorial quality, quality of publication, article quality and presentation quality. SAIF consider all these requirement as evaluation criteria.

Please read more here: Evaluation Criteria

All these consideration or requirement are calculated yielding impact factor of a specific year(s) following: 

​Quality Parameter with Score:
1. Number of citations (NC): 40 %
2. Publisher and editorial requirement (PEP): 10
3. Manuscript quality parameter (MQP): 15
4. Publication/Article quality parameter (PQP): 25
5. Standards and technical parameter (STP): 10, and
6. Total number of article published (TNAP*): 0.01 and 0.04

*TNAP: Total Number of Article Published is important and crucial for impact factor calculation. 

For, first 100 articles published score is 0.01 and then 100 to 200 score is 0.1+0.04=0.05. Accordingly, 200 to 300=0.5+0.04=0.09 and so on. For exceptional instances, where number of publication reasonably lower and cumulative publication years are considered, a score of 0.05 is added for each year with the calculated final score. 

Scholar Article Journal Index (SAJI):
Quality Parameters (NC+PEP+MQP+PQP+STP) * Total Number of Article Published (TNAP)