By Bruce H. Thiers, MD
Editor, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
In June, the Academy received some exciting news about the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (JAAD). We learned that JAAD’s Impact Factor (IF) took a big leap this year. JAAD’s IF trails only the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (a research journal), making JAAD’s impact factor the highest in the world among journals covering the wide spectrum of clinical dermatology.
The IF of a scientific journal is a measure reflecting the average number of times its articles have been cited in the past two years. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations by the total number of articles published during that time period. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field.
In 2015, the JAAD’s IF was 5.621, up from 4.449 in 2014. Our IF of 5.621 reflects that, on average, JAAD articles published in the past two years have been cited over 5 times. The score was reported in the 2016 Journal Citation Reports®, published by Thomson Reuters.
JAAD's Impact Factor soared to 5.621 in 2015. You can access all metrics on the online version of JAAD.
This is an especially impressive accomplishment because clinical journals tend to have lower IFs than research journals. Research-oriented journals are more frequently cited by investigators when they report the results of their research, whereas practitioners look to clinical journals to guide their daily patient care activities.
In addition to the IF, JAAD scored very high in other measurements of reader engagement. JAAD’s Eigenfactor Score also jumped in 2015 to 0.03386 from 0.02571 in 2014.
The Eigenfactor Score attempts to measure the overall importance of a scientific journal. Like the Impact Factor, the Eigenfactor Score uses citation data to assess and track the influence of a journal in relation to other journals, but it also considers which journals have contributed to these citations so that highly cited journals will influence the score more than less frequently cited journals.
JAAD’s Article Influence Score jumped to 1.769 in 2015 from 1.293 in 2014. The mean Article Influence Score is 1.00. An Article Influence Score greater than 1.00 indicates that the articles in a journal have above-average influence.
JAAD also tracks the altmetrics of its articles. Altmetrics are alternatives to the more traditional citation metrics mentioned previously. In addition to citations in other journals, altmetrics include other aspects of the impact of a work, such as article views, downloads, or mentions in social media and news media.
The success of
JAAD is the product of a team effort among our authors, the
JAAD editorial board, our external peer reviewers, and the Academy staff. We are working on new initiatives to ensure we maintain our high level of impact and engagement.
We will continue to focus on what dermatologists are most interested in: new therapies that can better advance patient care. Our readers want information on clinical trials of new drugs and we will continue to feature these. We have forged a special relationship with the Dermatology Foundation, which is at the cutting edge of research into the cause, prevention, and treatment of skin disease.
I look forward to keeping AAD members informed about new developments at
JAAD, and would like to thank you for your continued support of our specialty’s premier publication