Garfield E
Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
BMJ. 1996 Aug 17;313(7054):411-3. doi: 10.1136/bmj.313.7054.411.
Impact factors are widely used to rank and evaluate journals. They are also often used inappropriately as surrogates in evaluation exercises. The inventor of the Science Citation Index warns against the indiscriminate use of these data. Fourteen year cumulative impact data for 10 leading medical journals provide a quantitative indicator of their long term influence. In the final analysis, impact simply reflects the ability of journals and editors to attract the best papers available.
影响因子被广泛用于对期刊进行排名和评估。它们也经常在评估活动中被不适当地用作替代指标。《科学引文索引》的发明者警告不要滥用这些数据。10种领先医学期刊的14年累积影响数据提供了其长期影响力的量化指标。归根结底，影响力仅仅反映了期刊和编辑吸引现有最佳论文的能力。
