Long awaited numbers

One of the key markers used (rightly or wrongly) to judge the quality of an academic journal is its impact factor. These data give a measure of how often papers in one journal are cited by other papers. The idea is that if you are publishing good quality research, the papers in your journal will be cited more often. It is a crude figure but has a lot of influence in academic communities.

The new figures for 2011 came out today. The good news was that the impact factor for my journal had gone up by a significant amount and that three of our four journals saw rises. Now need to do some analysis of how we compare with our competitors.

Very busy day, lunch at my desk and did not get back in time to say goodbye to number one son before he went back to Sheffield. Will see him again soon though when we go up for graduation and to clean out his flat.