(Toronto, 20.06.2008) On June 20th, 2008, ISI/SCI released their 2007 Journal Citation Reports, reporting journal impact factors for the worlds' most important scholarly journals. JMIR slightly improved its impact factor to 3.0 and has now almost the same impact factor as the leading medical informatics journal (JAMIA), whose impact factor dropped to 3.1.
In fact, compared to the 2006 Impact Factors, most medical informatics journals - except JMIR - saw slight drops in their impact factors, e.g. J BIOMED INFORM (now 2.0), INT J MED INFORM (now 1.6), and METHOD INFORM MED (now 1.5). All these journals have respected editors in the field and significant backing of commercial publishers and/or societies. The only other journal with "Internet" in its title (MED INFORM INTERNET) achieved an impact factor of only 0.5. JMIR also has much faster turnaround times (days from submission to publication) than many of its competitor journals, and its unique open access policy helps uptake by other disciplines and the public - something the impact factor does not capture.
In the health services category, JMIR has an equal impact factor with HEALTH AFFAIRS, and beats journals such as HEALTH SERV RES, HEALTH EXPECT, AM J MANAG CARE, MED EDUC or TELEMED J E-HEALTH and J TELEMED TELECARE (the latter two have an impact factor of only 0.8).
Among the journals ranked by ISI/SCI, JMIR is still the only open access journal in the health informatics field. Authors considering submitting their work to JMIR should keep in mind that the "open access advantage" goes well beyond citations and uptake within the scientific community (as measured by citations) - it also facilitates dissemination and knowledge translation to a wider audience (including knowledge endusers such as policy makers or consumers) - in other words, the open access advantage goes well beyond citations and impact factor, as measured by ISI/SCI. (see also Eysenbach G. The Open Access Advantage, http://www.jmir.org/2006/2/e8/). For many authors, this is the primary reason for why they submit their best papers to JMIR.
About the Journal Impact Factor. The Journal Impact Factor is published in the Journal Citation Report (JCR), a product of Thomson ISI (Institute for Scientific Information). JCR provides quantitative tools for evaluating journals. The impact factor is one of these; it is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a given period of time. The impact factor for a journal is calculated based on a three-year period, and can be considered to be the average number of times published papers are cited one or two years after publication. The 2007 Journal Impact Factor (published in June 2008) takes into account citations that occurred in 2007, to JMIR articles published in 2005/2006. For information on the Impact Factor see http://scientific.thomson.com/. For access to the Web of Science / Journal Citation Reports, contact your librarian.
About the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR). JMIR is an independent open access journal, founded in 1999, published by scientists for scientists and the public. Work published in JMIR remains to be owned by the respective authors.