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© 2021 The Authors. Société Internationale d'Urologie Journal, published by the Société Internationale d'Urologie, Canada.

271SIUJ.ORG SIUJ  •  Volume 2, Number 5  •  September 2021

EDITORIAL

Impact Factor Dynamics
Peter C. Black, Editor-in-Chief 

Soc Int Urol J.2021;2(5):271–272

DOI: 10.48083/ZKHI7989

Every journal has its particular focus and also mission. 
The SIUJ, for example, strives for global representation 
and to provide relevant content to the global urologic 
audience. However, all journals share the goal of 
disseminating high-quality scientific content and, to 
some degree, journals are competing with one another 
for the same content. That is where the impact factor (IF) 
comes in.

For better or worse, the IF has become the principle 
quantitative measure of quality of a journal. This is one 
of several factors that authors use to select a journal to 
which to submit their scientific articles. Another factor 
may be the target audience of the journal. A paper may 
be better suited for a subspeciality journal rather than 
one targeting a broader audience. Journals in fields of 
research with a smaller audience may have lower IFs 
but still maintain high quality. A journal may develop 
strategies to ma ximize IF by developing content 
known to attract many citations (eg, review papers and 
guidelines), while another journal in the same field 
choses instead to provide a platform for publication 
across a broader spectrum of the specialty. The quality 
of the content in these two journals may be the same, but 
the former will claim a higher IF and the latter will feel 
the pressure to change publication policies in an attempt 
to match the higher impact journal.

Journals with higher IFs attract higher quality 
manuscripts, which makes the process self-fulfilling. On 
the other hand, new journals like the SIUJ can struggle 
to attract articles because of the lack of IF, which takes 
several years to obtain. Indeed, many prospective 
authors question why they should submit to journals 
like the SIUJ if they cannot list an IF in their curriculum 
vitae. The only motivation is for authors to support the 
mission and philosophy of the journal with the intent of 
building a high-quality journal that will eventually have 
a desirable IF. The European Urology family of journals 
has done a remarkable job in this regard.

We have observed IF inflation in all areas of medical 
publishing, including urologic publishing. There are 
numerous new urologic journals available. This implies 
that more papers are being published, which would 

mean that there is more opportunity for published 
papers to be cited. On the other hand, this also means 
that citations could be spread over more papers, which 
would result in IF deflation. In an analysis by Althouse 
et al. in 2008, most of the increase in IF was attributed 
to more references per manuscript rather than more 
manuscripts[1]. The weighted IF for 23 urologic journals 
in 2004 was 2.132, and it increased by 3.2% annually 
between 1995 and 2004. In their analysis, however, 
just as many journals left the field as entered the field, 
and that is not the case in urologic publishing in recent 
years. They reported that larger fields do not have larger 
IFs based on size alone. However, if every paper cites 
key articles on the topic of investigation, and there are 
many more papers, it does stand to reason that some 
journals will see an increase in IF due to this increase in 
publication.

The digital boom and open access could also 
contribute to IF inflation. Easier access to journal articles 
allows easier citation. A trip to the library and coins for 
the photocopy machine are no longer required to read a 
published article. In this regard, IF inflation is a positive 
trend. It is also positive if it means more investigators are 
conducting and publishing research.

There is no question that there are significant flaws 
in the use of the IF as a measure of quality research and 
especially as a measure of an individual researcher’s 
output, which can be used to determine funding and 
promotion. The IF of a journal is ultimately determined 
by technical factors not related to an article’s quality[2]. 
Utrecht University in the Netherlands has recently made 
a very clear statement with respect to the simmering 
debate about use of IF in academia[3]. This institution 
will abandon the use of the IF in all hiring and 
promotion decisions. Instead, they will judge scholars 
on the basis of commitment to teamwork, efforts to 
promote open science, and other measures. Means 
to evaluate those measures need to be established. 
Other institutions will likely follow the lead of Utrecht 
University, but there is no reason yet to think that the 
importance of the IF in publishing and in academia will 
decline any time soon.

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272 SIUJ  •  Volume 2, Number 5  •  September 2021 SIUJ.ORG

EDITORIAL

References

1. Althouse, BM West JD, Bergstrom T, Bergstrom CT. Differences in 
impact factor across fields and over time. 2008 April 23. Available 
at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76h442pg. Accessed August 
7, 2021.

2. Seglen PO. Why the impact factor of journals should not be used 
for evaluating research. BMJ.1997Feb 15;314(7079):498–502. doi: 
10.1136/bmj.314.7079.497

3. Woolston C. Impact factor abandoned by Dutch university in hiring 
and promotion decisions. Nature.2021 June 25;595:462. Available at: 
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01759-5. Accessed 
August 7, 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01759-5

http://SIUJ.org
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76h442pg
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01759-5
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01759-5



