In praise of the impact factor
preprint
OA: closed
Abstract
The impact factor has been criticized on several fronts, including that the distribution of citations to journal articles is heavily skewed. We nuance these critiques and show that the number of citations an article receives is significantly predicted by journal impact factor. Thus, impact factor can be used as a reasonably good proxy of article quality.
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- europepmc
- last seen: 2026-05-19T01:45:01.086888+00:00
- unpaywall
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