The Institute for Scientific Information impact factor is a measure used by researchers, authors, and libraries to judge the overall “quality” of a journal. Journals with higher impact factors are held to be more prestigious and of higher impact than those with lower impact factors. Indeed, tenure and promotion committees often assess not only a candidate’s number of publications but also the impact factor of the journals in which the candidate has published.
Once again, we are pleased to report that Pharmacotherapy’s impact factor has increased (from 2.527 to 2.726), making it the highest impact factor among the pharmacy journals. We have created the following report so that you can see the relevant data for each pharmacy journal.
| Journal |
Total Cites |
Articles |
Impact Factor |
5-Year Impact Factor |
Self-Citations (%) |
Rank (X/236) |
| Pharmacotherapy |
4393 |
135 |
2.726 |
2.255 |
2 |
90 |
| AJHP |
3343 |
167 |
2.097 |
1.961 |
14 |
132 |
| Annals of Pharmacotherapy |
5568 |
237 |
2.453 |
2.190 |
5 |
111 |
Details of Pharmacotherapy’s impact factor:
| |
2008 |
2007 |
Sum |
| Cites in 2009 to items published in |
407 |
618 |
1025 |
| Number of items published in |
166 |
210 |
376 |
Calculation of Pharmacotherapy’s impact factor:
| Cites to recent items |
1025 |
= 2.726 |
| Number of recent items |
376 |
| |
Citable Items |
| |
Research Articles |
Reviews |
Combined |
Other Items |
| Number in JCR year 2009 (A) |
93 |
42 |
135 |
18 |
| Number of references (B) |
2910 |
3019 |
5929 |
129 |
| Ratio (B/A) |
31.3 |
71.9 |
43.9 |
7.2 |
Journal Source Data:
The table directly above shows the number of citable items in the journal citation report (JCR) year. Citable items are further divided into research articles and reviews.
An item is classified as a review if it meets any of the following criteria:
- It cites more than 100 references.
- It appears in a review publication or a review section of a journal.
- The word review or overview appears in its title.
- The abstract states that it is a review or survey.
Data in the “Other Items” column include editorials, letters, news items, and meeting abstracts. These items are not counted in JCR calculations because they are not generally cited. Data in this column are available only in JCR 2003 and subsequent years.
The table also shows the number of references cited by the research articles and reviews in the JCR year. The ratio of references to citable items indicates the average number of references cited by a research article or review.