Scopus to launch own "impact factor"


Image: Scopus logo.

Elsevier’s bibliometrics service Scopus has laid down the gauntlet to Thomson Reuters (ISI) by leaking information about releasing its own ‘impact factor’ for the journals it covers from January 2010.

Details first emerged at the London Online exhibition, where Scopus executives let it be known that the impact factor – as yet unnamed – will be made freely available without subscription for all 18,000 journal titles it currently indexes. In direct competition to ISI, which itself has now increased the number of journals it indexes to over 9,000, the new metric aims to be more ‘transparent’ than ISI’s Impact Factor, and more ‘contextualised’, although details on how this would be represented remained sketchy.

The move would mark a shift in the academic journals market, which for over 40 years has only had the Impact Factor with which to attempt to measure journal quality. It also comes amidst a backdrop of increased commercial activity from Scopus, which has recently been appointed as a metrics provider for both the Australian and Japanese Education departments. Currently Emerald has 136 journals indexed on Scopus, with 42 indexed on ISI following the recent inclusion of the Journal of Knowledge Management.