THE USEFULNESS OF IMPACT FACTOR IN SERIAL SELECTION - A RANK AND MEANANALYSIS USING ECOLOGY JOURNALS

This paper investigates the usefulness of ISI Journal Impact Factors i n making serial selection and deselection decisions, It shows that Imp act,acr Factors do not remain relatively constant from year to year sp ecifically, the rank order of 56 ecology titles was found to vary cons iderably over time. The median year-to-year variation in Impact Factor s was found to be 21.9%, and the average variability of Impact Factors over a five-year period was 13.2%. The study: also found a considerab le degree of overlap in the average Impact Factor of serials in the IS I's Ecology category. These findings cast doubt on the usefulness of r elying on a single year's JCR (Journal Citation Reports) to make infor med selection/deselection decisions, (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.