Journal Impact Factor: A Measure of Quality or Popularity?

Due to quest for quality, researchers often prefer citing articles from journals possessing higher Impact Factor. Until now, Journal Impact Factor has been measured as a popularity index. i.e. only the number of citations of the journal articles determine the impact factor, be it any domain, regardless of the quantum of research progressed so far. However, the art of citing has gradually changed to be a matter of convenience and not of quality. This is due to many journals obtaining higher visibility like open access. Due to this dilution of policy in citation making, assessing a journal by its quality, rather than circulation and visibility is more important. Here, we suggest two parameters, author and article content, for measuring a journal quality. The originality of the article along with other evaluation measures, and the research quantum of the article’s author(s) contribute to measuring the quality of a research paper which accumulates to the journal quality.