Use of Journal Citation Reports and Journal Performance Indicators in measuring short and long term journal impact.

The impact factor has become the subject of widespread controversy. It has gradually developed to mean both journal and author impact. The emphasis on impact factors obscures the main purpose of bibliographic databases created at the Institute for Scientific Information. I will here show how two of these databases, Journal Citation Reports and the Journal Performance Indicators, can be used to study scientific journals and the articles they publish, as well as the evolution of scientific fields.