The Editorial Board

The Editorial Board spends considerable time on efforts to improve the impact factor (IF) for the Health Information Management Journal (HIMJ). The current HIMJ IF, relating to 2020 data, is 3.185, the highest it has ever been. But what does this mean? The IF provides a way to rank and assess journals, representing the frequency with which an average article in a journal has been cited in a given year. Whilst the increase in the Impact Factor is great news and partially reflects the hard work of the Editorial Board in making improvements to the HIMJ, we do note that Clarivate has changed the way it calculates the IF this year with further changes to be phased in over the next few years.  

This year, Clarivate has introduced Early Access content in Journal Citation Reports to more accurately reflect the dynamic citation environment of rapid online publication. What these changes mean is that the 2020 Impact Factor prioritised the online publication date rather than the print publication date to calculate citations to a journal in 2020.

The 2021 Impact Factor (to be published in June 2022) will prioritise the online publication date for the citing article data (numerator) as well as half the denominator data (2020 citable items).

The 2022 Impact Factor (published in June 2023) will prioritise the online publication date for both the citing (numerator) and cited (denominator) article data in the Impact Factor equation.

What this means is that for journals with high volumes of online, ahead-of-print articles, there has been an inflation in the Impact Factors for 2020. HIMJ is one of these journals. We expect that the changes will regularise with the publication of the 2021 Impact Factors next year.

The Impact Factor is used as a proxy measure of the ‘importance’, ‘reach’ or standing of a journal (https://clarivate.com/essays/impact-factor/).  A journal must be indexed in Web of Science to have an impact factor, meaning it meets 28 “quality criteria” which measure it’s scholarly content and publication process. The fact that not only does HIMJ have an impact factor, but that it is improving over time reflects positively on the HIMAA and its members.

The Editorial Board

The Editorial Board

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Phone: +61 9887 5002

Email: news@himaa.org.au

Level 1, Building 17, 51 Wicks Road North Ryde NSW 2113