Impact Score: Optimizing the timeliness and accuracy of journal impact assessment

Abstract

In the era of electronic publishing, the speed of journal publication, dissemination, and citation has significantly increased. However, traditional journal evaluation metrics fail to capture this immediate impact of journal dissemination. Considering the issues of journal evaluation metrics in the context of the digital publishing era, this paper introduces an improved metric for journal evaluation, named Impact Score (IS). It integrates the number of citations a journal receives in its publication year within the framework of Journal Impact Factor (JIF) to measure journal impact in a more timely and comprehensive manner. The IS for a journal in a given year (Y) is calculated as the total number of citations received by the journal's items published from Y-2 to Y, divided by the total number of the citable items published during the same period. This paper systematically calculates the IS of 10,736 journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database, analyses the performance differences of IS across different disciplines and journals, and further explores the correlation between IS and journal dissemination speed-related indicators (such as Citation Half-Life). Empirical results indicate that IS exhibits a high positive correlation with both JIF and the Immediacy Index (II). Journals with high citation counts and II scores in their publication year achieve higher rankings in the IS system. IS effectively identifies journals with rapid knowledge dissemination characteristics while maintaining the stability of the traditional JIF evaluation framework, thereby providing a more sensitive and comprehensive measurement tool for journal evaluation in the electronic publishing environment.