(Toronto, 22.06.2007) We are happy and proud to report that on June 20th, 2007, ISI/SCI released their 2006 Journal Citation Reports, reporting journal impact factors for the worlds' most important scholarly journals. For the first time, the J Med Internet Res (JMIR) was "officially" included - and ended up with a considerable impact factor of 2.9, placing the journal on #2 in the medical informatics category (out of 20 medical informatics journals), and #6 in the very broad "Health Care Sciences & Services" journal category, which includes 56 other leading journals !
In the health informatics field, many much longer established journals, such as J BIOMED INFORM (2.3), INT J MED INFORM (1.7), and METHOD INFORM MED (1.7) - all with respected editors in the field and significant backing of commercial publishers and/or societies - have impact factors well below JMIR. The only other journal with "Internet" in its title (MED INFORM INTERNET) achieved an impact factor of only 0.6. The only journal with a slightly higher impact factor, the official journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, is very much focused on clinical informatics - but JMIR beats that journal with a better immediacy index. The immediacy index measures how quickly after publication articles are cited by others (while the impact factor takes into account only citations that occur in 1-2 years after publication). 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 also 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 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 2006 Journal Impact Factor (published in June 2007) takes into account citations that occurred in 2006, to JMIR articles published in 2004/2005. 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.