Impact Factors and eigenFACTOR.org (Redux)

Posted on June 19, 2008 by mikethemadbiologist

ScienceBlogling Bora, in discussing the new release of journal impact factors–an estimation of how widely read journal articles are–writes:

One day, hopefully very soon, this will not be news. What I mean by it is that there soon will be better metrics – ways to evaluate individual articles and individual people in way that is transparent and useful and, hopefully, helps treat the “CNS Disease”.

There is a better metric than the impact factor: the eigenfactor.

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1 Response to Impact Factors and eigenFACTOR.org (Redux)

  1. James F says:
    June 19, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    I’m on board with everything except cross-referencing to the social sciences. I would guess that it is responsible for this outcome:
    Nature: EF 1.9917, AI 17.563
    Science: EF 1.905, AI 18.287
    Cell: EF 0.65975, AI 17.037
    PNAS: EF 1.8301, 5.1534
    I like PNAS, but its EF seems overly high. Nothing is perfect, of course, but this worries me.

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