THE IMPACT FACTOR AND THE IMPACT OF MEDIC AL JOURNALS

Original articles published ii scientific journals are important param eters Sor committees when they, evaluate academic promotions or resear ch grant applications. The analysis usually tries to give each paper q ualitative/quantitative assessment. An article's citation by others is accepted is a fair estimate of the value assigned to its originality and importance. A main determinant of every citation index is the inte rnational relevance attained hy the journal where the article appeared . The ''impact factor'' of journals enlisted ill the mainstream litera ture, as defined by, the Journal Citation Reports (ISI), is being used by, many assessors worldwide. But this index appears to be an unfair, unit of measurement for journals thar, although included ill the main international data bases, nle published ill non-English languages. Fu rthermore, some local journals that are lot enlisted by the Institute for Scientific Information apply external peer review to select their publications. In contrast, those same journals may have great relevanc e for their contributing authors and a high impact ill their renders. The Editor's Proposal is io classify original articles published iii b iomedical sciences, clinical medicine and public health topics using a three steps scale a low score to articles published iir local journal s that use the peer review system, even though they were not enlisted ill international data bases ii higher score to articles published in journals included ii the mainstream literature, without considering th eir ''impact factors'' ns differential values, and the highest score t o articles published ill journals recognized as international leaders ill biomedicine, general medicine or iii the subspecialties. Therefore , mainstream journals published iir non-English languages would not be discriminated from other journals having higher ''impact factors'' ma inly due to their use of the English language.