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{{Theme
|Theme Type=Good Practices
|Has Parent Theme=Theme:8453f98b-244e-4147-9268-504afbe9d878
|Title=Eigenfactor
|Is About=Eigenfactor is a method developed as an alternative metric to the impact factor (IF). Since IF does not consider sources of citations, those from prestigious journals seem to be worth no more than citations from less influential publications.<ref name=":0">Bergstrom C T, West J D, Wiseman M A. The Eigenfactor™ Metrics. J Neurosci. 2008;28(45):11433-11434.</ref> Eigenfactor, on the other hand, aims to evaluate the influence of journals in order to help researchers navigate the scholarly literature.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Eigenfactor.org. About the Eigenfactor Project. [cited 2020 Oct 14]. Available from: http://www.eigenfactor.org/about.php.</ref><ref>Fersht A. The most influential journals: Impact Factor and Eigenfactor. PNAS. 2009;106(17):6883-6884.</ref>
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|Important Because=The Eigenfactor metrics, developed in 2007 by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West,<ref name=":0">Eigenfactor.org. About the Eigenfactor Project. [cited 2020 Oct 14]. Available from: http://www.eigenfactor.org/about.php.</ref> measures the number of times articles from the journals published in the past five years have been cited in Thompson Scientific’s Journal Citation Reports (JCR).<ref name=":1">Oxford LibGuides. Bibliometrics & Citation Tracking: Eigenfactor. 2020 Jul 29. [cited 2020 Oct 14]. Available from: https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/c.php?g=422992&p=2890485. </ref><ref>Enago academy. Eigenfactor vs. Impact Factor: How are They Different? 2019 Jul 19. [cited 2020 Oct 14]. Available from: https://www.enago.com/academy/eigenfactor-vs-impact-factor/. </ref> It considers which journals have contributed to these citations,<ref name=":2">Chang C L, McAleer M J, Oxley L. Journal Impact Factor Versus Eigenfactor and Article Influence. KIER Working Papers 737, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research. 2010.</ref> therefore this approach identifies the most influential journals, those which are cited by other influential journals.<ref>Bergstrom C. Eigenfactor. Measuring the value and prestige of scholarly journals. C&RL News. 2007;314-316.</ref><ref>Kianfiar H R, Sadeghi R. Comparison Between Impact Factor, Eigenfactor Metrics, and SCimago Journal Rank Indicator of Pediatric Neurology Journals. Acta Inform Med. 2014;22(2): 103-106.</ref><ref name=":3">Cantin M, Muñoz M, Roa I. Comparison between Impact Factor, Eigenfactor Score, and SCImago Journal Rank Indicator in Anatomy and Morphology Journals. Int J. Morphol. 2015;33(3):1183-1188.</ref><ref name=":4">West J D. Eigenfactor: ranking and mapping scientific knowledge [dissertation]. Seattle: University of Washington;2010. p. 140.</ref> 

Unlike the IF, the Eigenfactor Score counts citations to journals in social sciences and humanities as well, and it eliminates self-citations.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" /> It considers citations in the period of five years, in contrast to the IF’s number of citations over a two-year window.<ref name=":4" /> This difference impacts fields where it takes longer for articles to receive citations.<ref name=":4" /> For example, the average article in leading cell biology journal can receive 10 to 30 citations in two years, whereas the average article in leading mathematics journal can receive 2 citations in the same time scale. Using the entire citation network, the algorithm takes into account these differences and enables better and more accurate comparison of different research areas.<ref name=":0" />
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|Important For=Researchers; PhD students; Journal editors
|Has Best Practice=The website [http://www.eigenfactor.org/ www.eigenfactor.org] reports measures for publications indexed by JCR as well as journals, books, newspapers, and other reference items that are referred to by these publications.<ref name=":0">Bergstrom C. Eigenfactor. Measuring the value and prestige of scholarly journals. C&RL News. 2007;314-316.</ref> The number of journals has increased each year. In 1997 the website listed 6,439 journals, whereas in 2014 it measured influence of 11,200 journals.<ref name=":1">Eigenfactor.org. About the Eigenfactor Project. [cited 2020 Oct 14]. Available from: http://www.eigenfactor.org/about.php</ref>

Two principle scores are calculated: Eigenfactor score and Article Influence score. Eigenfactor scores are scaled so that the scores of all journals listed in JCR sum up to 100. If a journal has an Eigenfactor score of 1.0, it has 1% of the total influence of all indexed publications. In 2014, the journal PLoS One had the highest Eigenfactor score, with a value of 1.533.<ref name=":1" /> Since larger journals will have more citations, they will subsequently have larger Eigenfactor scores.<ref name=":1" /><ref>Enago academy. Eigenfactor vs. Impact Factor: How are They Different? 2019 Jul 19. [cited 2020 Oct 14]. Available from: https://www.enago.com/academy/eigenfactor-vs-impact-factor/. </ref><ref name=":0" /> However, the most prestigious journals are not necessarily the largest, but the ones that receive the most citations per article. With regards to that, the Article Influence score measures the influence of a journal per article. It is calculated as a journal’s Eigenfactor Score divided by the number of articles in that journal and normalized so that the average article in the JCR has an Article Influence score of 1.<ref>West J D. Eigenfactor: ranking and mapping scientific knowledge [dissertation]. Seattle: University of Washington;2010. p. 140.</ref> Therefore, if an Article Influence score of a journal is 3.0, then the articles of that journals are on average three times as influential as the average article in JCR.<ref>Bergstrom C T, West J D, Wiseman M A. The Eigenfactor™ Metrics. J Neurosci. 2008;28(45):11433-11434.</ref> In 2014, the journal CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians had the highest Article Influence score, with value of 3.95.<ref name=":1" />
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{{Tags
|Involves=Carl T. Bergstrom; Jevin D. West
|Has Virtue And Value=Accountability
|Has Good Practice And Misconduct=Publication ethics
}}