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Poult Sci 2007. 86:1
© 2007 Poultry Science Association
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EDITORIAL

Poultry Science: Celebrating Its Impact Factor, Impact, and Quality

Colin G. Scanes, Editor-in-Chief

Poultry Science has long had a strong reputation as a premier journal publishing fundamental and applied research relating to all aspects of poultry and related species. This reflects the strength of research of scientists contributing to the field, and the numbers of papers published in Poultry Science are continuing to increase (see Table 1Go). In addition, it is critically important to recognize the diligent efforts of reviewers and editors to ensure that the peer review process is conducted in a fair and rigorous manner.


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  		Table 1. Impact factor for Poultry Science
 
There is quantitative evidence not only of the quality of Poultry Science but also that there are significant improvements to the quality as indicated by the "impact factor." Table 1Go summarizes the changes in the impact factor of the journal for the most recent years where data are available. The most recent impact factor for the journal ranks it higher than other journals that publish poultry research (Table 2Go).


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  		Table 2. Impact factors for journals that publish poultry research
 
The impact factor of journals is essentially the number of citations to papers in the journal divided by the number of papers published for a given year. Obviously, more citations to papers mean a higher impact factor. Abstracts, book reviews, and editorials are not included in the denominator. The impact factor of journals was first developed and used by Eugene Garfield in the early 1960s to determine which journals were to be included in the Science Citation Index. It is also referred to as the Garfield factor (Vinkler, 2005). Parenthetically, one of the criteria for ranking the top 500 universities globally (the Shanghai 500) is the number of papers published from a given institution in journals covered by the Science Citation Index. Increasingly since at least the 1980s, universities and research institutes are using the impact factor of the journal where a faculty member/scientist publishes as an indicator of the quality of the work. The validity of this metric can be debated, as in fact can most quantitative criteria. There is, however, good evidence that the impact factor of a journal is a very good indicator of the quality of the journal (Opthof, 1997; Vinkler, 2004). To quote Hoeffel (1998) "Experience has shown that in each specialty the best journals are those in which it is most difficult to have an article accepted, and these are the journals that have a high impact factor." "The use of impact factors as a measure of quality is widespread because it fits well with the opinion we have in each field of the best journals in our specialty."

It is a delight to see the impact factor of Poultry Science as high and continuing to increase. Sincere appreciation is extended to the authors, reviewers, staff, editors, and past editors for making the journal what it is today.


   REFERENCES
TOP
 REFERENCES
 
Hoeffel C. 1998. Journal impact factors. Allergy 53:1225.[Web of Science][Medline]

Opthof T. 1997. Sense and nonsense about impact factors. Cardiovasc. Res. 33:1–7.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

Vinkler P. 2004. Characterization of the impact of sets of scientific papers: The Garfield (impact) factor. J. Am. Soc. Inform. Sci. 55: 431–435.




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