A new classification system to describe the ageing of scientific journals and their impact factors

During the past decades, journal impact data obtained from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) have gained relevance in library management, research management and research evaluation. Hence, both information scientists and bibliometricians share the responsibility towards the users of the JCR to analyse the reliability and validity of its measures thoroughly, to indicate pitfalls and to suggest possible improvements. In this article, ageing patterns are examined in 'formal' use or impact of all scientific journals processed for the Science Citation Index (SCT) during 1981-1995. A new classification system of journals in terms of their ageing characteristics is introduced. This system has been applied to as many as 3,098 journals covered by the Science Citation Index. Following an earlier suggestion by Glanzel and Schoepflin, a maturing and a decline phase are distinguished. From an analysis across all subfields it has been concluded that ageing characteristics are primarily specific to the individual journal rather than to the subfield, while the distribution of journals in terms of slowly or rapidly maturing or declining types is specific to the subfield. It is shown that the cited half life (CHL), printed in the JCR, is an inappropriate measure of decline of journal impact. Following earlier work by Line and others, a more adequate parameter of decline is calculated taking into account the size of annual volumes during a range of fifteen years. For 76% of SCI journals the relative difference between this new parameter and the ISI CI-IL exceeds 5%. The current JCR journal impact factor is proven to be biased towards journals revealing a rapid maturing and decline in impact. Therefore, a longer term impact factor is proposed, as well as a normalised impact statistic, taking into account citation characteristics of the research subfield covered by a journal and the type of documents published in it. When these new measures are combined with the proposed ageing classification system, they provide a significantly improved picture of a journal's impact to that obtained from the JCR.