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International Journal Of Epidemiology Reported To Have Highest Impact Factor

Jumps By 30% From 2012 To 2013

The latest 2014 report from Journal Citation Reports provides its ranking of journals by its “impact factor” metric and it ranks the International Journal of Epidemiology as having the highest impact factor in this category of 160 journals (see table below). The impact factor reflects the number of citations which an “average article” in the journal receives as a measure of the influence of the journal content.

Whatever readers think about the merits or demerits of journal impact factors, most of the leading epidemiology journals promote or provide their impact factors on the home pages of their websites.

Use Of Impact Factors

The only exception we could find among the leading journals is Epidemiology where several critiques of the impact factor have been published in the past.

The International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE) touts the latest result on its home page and the indicator was mentioned proudly in different settings at the recent triennial meeting of the sponsoring International Epidemiological Association (IEA) in Anchorage.

Criticisms

Critics we spoke to said the impact factor is a poor marker of quality, one reason being that journals can publish editorials with self-citations which tends to increase the impact factor, and another being that high quality papers may appeal to only a small readership and therefore influence negatively the impact factor metric.

IEA Statement

According to a statement on the IEA news page, “The 2013 impact factor ratings place the IJE first out of a field of 160 journals. Since taking up the editorship of the IJE at the turn of the millennium, George Davey Smith and Shah Ebrahim have slowly but surely driven the journal up the impact factor rankings. However, this year it made a major leap to outstrip its main American rivals: Environmental Health Perspectives and Epidemiologic Reviews (both frequently ranked first), Epidemiology, and the American Journal of Epidemiology. Paul Kidd of Oxford University Press, which publishes the IJE, commented: ‘An increase of this magnitude in one year is very rare and a great result for the IJE. This is a triumph for the hard work and dedication of the Editors and Editorial Board.’”

We welcome reader comments on the current crop of impact factors for 2013. Below is a table providing the impact factors for the top 25 public health journals. The table is adapted from the Lamar Soutter library at the University of Massachusetts which provides this listing free of charge on its website.

Journal Impact Factor
International Journal of Epidemiology

9.197

Epidemiologic Reviews

7.333

Environmental Health Perspectives

7.029

Annual Review of Public Health

6.627

Epidemiology

6.178

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology

5.478

Tobacco Control

5.150

European Journal of Epidemiology

5.147

Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health Part B: Critical Reviews

5.146

Bulletin of the World Health Organization

5.112

American Journal of Epidemiology

4.975

Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention

4.324

American Journal of Preventive Medicine

4.281

 
Journal Impact Factor
American Journal of Public Health

4.229

Environmental Research

3.951

Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology

3.938

Health Reports

3.314

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health

3.294

International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health

3.276

Occupational and Environmental Medicine

3.234

Scandinavian Journal of Public Health

3.125

Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health

3.095

Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology

3.050

Cancer Causes & Control

2.961

Genetic Epidemiology

2.951

 


Adapted from the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts


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