The Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library

Mount Sinai Faculty who want to calculate an individual impact factor and obtain journal impact factors should use two of the Levy Library's ISI Web of Knowledge databases, Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports. Librarians designed this guide to help you:

• Part I: Calculate Your Individual Impact Factor using Web of Science
  • Step 1: Find Your Total Number of Articles Published In 2005 and 2006
  • Step 2: Find Out How Many Times These Articles Were Cited in 2007
  • Step 3: Calculate Your Individual Impact Factor
• Part II: Obtain the Journal Impact Factor for the Top Three Journals in Your Area/Subspecialty using Journal Citation Reports

Directions for finding the requested information are below. For questions about searching ISI's Web of Knowledge, please contact a reference librarian by email: refdesk@mssm.edu or by phone: (212) 241-7204.

The journal impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. Journal impact factors, tabulated for over 7,000 journals in the Journal Citation Reports database, are calculated by dividing the number of citations in the current year to articles published in the two previous years by the total number of articles published in the two previous years.

Using the same methodology, you can calculate an individual impact factor for 2007. The investigator's individual impact factor, when compared to the journal impact factor of the top journals in his or her field, provides a measure of research productivity.

From Web of Science's main search page:

1. Select Author from the drop-down menu on the right. Then, type the author's last name with first and middle initials (no comma). Consider using an asterisk after the first initial to retrieve papers where no middle initial was used. Ex. smith b*

2. Select Year Published from the second drop-down menu and type in: 2005-2006.

3. Select Document Type from the third drop-down menu. Then, hold down the Control key to select both Article and Review from the list of document types. (This is done to your advantage, in order to exclude publications such as abstracts and editorials that are not usually cited.)

4. Click Search.

This search may need to be repeated if you published under different name variations.

5. Review the results to determine the number that are your publications.

• You may need to advance through several pages of results in order to count all of your publications.
• If the number of results found is too large (ex., if you have a common last name and initials), consider viewing papers by subject category under Refine Results.
• To count your articles, you may wish to Mark the papers as you go through the results. To do this: put a check mark next to your selections and click Add to Marked List to display a running total. The number of articles marked will display at the top of the screen, next to Marked List.

Please note: If you can not find one of your articles, it may be in a journal that is not indexed by Web of Science. These papers will not be included in this calculation.

In this example, Dr. Smith has identified 10 papers of the 81 results that are hers.

Record the total number of articles you published in 2005-2006. This number is the denominator you will use to calculate your individual impact factor.

1. Click on Cited Reference Search.

Please note: This is a new search with a different function from the general Search used in Step 1. Any articles you marked in Step 1 will not affect the Cited Reference Search. You will again need to select your publications from the results page.

2.. Enter author name next to Cited Author and 2005-2006 next to Cited Years. (Leave Cited Work blank.)

Consider using an asterisk after the first initial to retrieve papers where no middle initial was used.
Ex: smith b*

Click Search.

3. This search will display articles published in 2005-2006 that have been cited at least once.

a. Select Your Articles: Check off the boxes next to papers you published. To see the titles of the articles, click Show Expanded Titles.

• You may need to advance through several pages of results, making selections on each page.
• If you authored everything on the page, or everything on all pages, click Select Page or Select All.

b. When you are finished making selections, click Finish Search.

4. This page will display all the papers that have cited your 2005-2006 articles. These results must be limited to papers that were published in 2007. To do this, click Analyze Results.

5. On the next screen, select Publication Year. Then make sure the number under Analyze: Up To exceeds your total number of records. Click Analyze.

6. Find the number of times your papers were cited in 2007.

This number is your numerator.

From this example:

Step 1: Number of articles published in 2005-2006 = 10

Step 2: Cites in 2007 to articles published in 2005-2006 = 55

Individual Impact Factor = Cites in 2007 to articles published in 2005-2006/ Articles published in 2005-2006

Therefore, the individual impact factor in this example is: 55/10= 5.5

1. To determine the impact factor for a journal, go to Journal Citation Reports. From off-campus you will be asked to login with your Mount Sinai email login name and password. Read about off-campus access here.

2. Make sure the correct edition (Science or Social Sciences) and 2007 are selected.

Then select: Search for a specific journal and click Submit.

3. On the next screen, enter the title of the journal in the box and click Search.

We recommend searching by the full journal title, because JCR's abbreviations are different from standard MEDLINE abbreviations.

4. The Journal Summary List, which includes the impact factor for the journal you selected, will display.

Repeat this process to record the journal impact factors for the top three journals in your field.

*Displaying a Group of Journals by Subject

The following method is mentioned as an alternative technique for finding journal data and ranking for your subspecialty.

Return to the JCR search home page by clicking the Welcome button. Then select View a Group of Journals by Subject Category.

Choose a subject from the list on the next screen.

Then, select how you would like to sort the list of journals.

Click Submit.

The journal summary list displays, showing you JCR's ranking of journals by impact factor.

Page created by: Laura Schimming, Reference & Instruction Librarian, Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Last updated: Feb 2009