SPORTSCIENCE · sportsci.org

Description: Description: Description: Latest issue

News & Comment / Research Resources

Description: Description: Description: This issue

Impact Factors and Article Influence Scores for Journals in Sports Medicine and Science in 2013

Will G Hopkins

Sportscience 17, 20-23, 2013 (sportsci.org/2013/wghif.htm)
Sport and Recreation, AUT University, Auckland 0627, New Zealand.  Email. 
Reviewer: David Pyne, Department of Physiology, Australian Institute of Sport, Canberra, Australia.

Exercise and Immunology Review was the clear winner in this year's race for the highest journal impact factor (7.1) in the sport and exercise disciplines. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews (5.3) nudged ahead of Sports Medicine (5.2) for second place. Other finalists were Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (4.5), American Journal of Sports Medicine (4.4), British Journal of Sports Medicine (3.7), Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports (3.2), and Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy (3.0). Semi-finalists were Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport (2.9), Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology (2.5), Clinics in Sports Medicine (2.4), International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance (2.3), International Journal of Sports Medicine (2.3), Journal of Sports Sciences (2.1), and Human Movement Science (2.0). Journals with an impact factor of at least 1.0 and a moderate increase of at least 30% since last year were Exercise and Immunology Review, Clinics in Sports Medicine, Current Sports Medicine Reports, Physical Therapy in Sport, Physician and Sportsmedicine, and Sport Education and Society. The article influence score, a statistic representing the quantity and quality of citations to articles in a journal, had an extremely high correlation (0.93) with the impact factor and therefore does not provide any information additional to that of the impact factor.

 KEYWORDS: citation, publication, research.

Reprint pdf · Reprint doc · Spreadsheet (sorted by impact factor)

 

This article represents my annual summary of the latest impact factors of journals in the disciplines of sport and exercise medicine and science. The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters) compiles the impact factors and publishes them as Journal Citation Reports each year around June-July. You will need an institutional subscription to access this and other resources at ISI Web of Knowledge.

Table 1 lists the factors of our journals in alphabetical order, while the abstract summarizes the most noteworthy performers in the journals specializing in our disciplines (i.e., excluding the applied biomechanics, physiology and psychology journals). The meaning of the impact factor is summarized in the legend of the table, but for an in-depth explanation and critique of the impact factor, start with an earlier article in this series.

This year I have also investigated a citation statistic that ISI calls the article influence score:  a number representing "the average influence of a journal's articles over the first five years after publication". Whereas the impact factor of a journal represents how often articles in the journal are cited, the article influence score takes into account the impact factor of the journals doing the citing. In other words, it's a relative measure of quantity and quality of citations. The average influence score across all disciplines is 1.0.

 

Figure 1. Article influence scores and impact factors of journals with impact factors of at least 1.0 in sports medicine and science this year. The regression line was drawn by excluding the journal shown with an open symbol.

 

Figure 1 shows article influence scores and impact factors of journals in sports medicine and science with impact factors of at least 1.0. One journal is clearly off the trend between these two metrics: Exercise and Immunology Review made a huge leap to 7.1 from last year's 2.8, presumably because it featured reviews recently that are of interest to the wider community of biomedical scientists, and the influence score hasn't caught up yet. When this journal is excluded, the correlation between article influence score and impact factor is an extremely high 0.93 (at worst very high at the lower end of the 90% confidence interval, 0.86 to 0.96). The correlation would presumably be even higher, if the period of citations for the article influence score (5 y) was the same as that of the impact factor (2 y). It follows that for the journals in the exercise and sport disciplines, the article influence score provides little information additional to that provided by the impact factor.  I am unlikely to include the article influence score in any future article on impact factors.

 

Table 1. Impact factors (cites per article per year) for sports medicine and science journals based on articles published in 2010 and 2011 that were cited in 2012.  Some impact factors are shown as inequalities, to comply with terms of use set by Thomson Reuters. "?" indicates a possible inadvertent omission of the journal from the databases. "<1.0" implies a value between 0.1 and 1.0.  "<0.1" implies a non-zero value less than 0.1.  A journal without an impact factor is not in Thomson Reuter's science or social sciences databases, either because the journal is too new or the factor is too low. Color indicates direction and magnitude of change in impact factor since last year, as follows:

New

 ł70%

 30-69%

 10-29%

 0-9%

 ł10%

<1.0

ACSM's Health and Fitness Journal

4.4

Acta Physiologica Scandinavica

1.1

Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly

 

American Journal of Medicine and Sports

4.5

American Journal of Physiology - Endo & Metab

3.6

American Journal of Physiology - Heart & Circ

4.4

American Journal of Sports Medicine

1.7

Applied Ergonomics

2.0

Applied Physiology Nutrition & Metabolism

1.1

Applied Psychological Measurement

1.5

Applied Psychology-International Review

<1.0

Archives of Budo

 

Asian Journal of Sports Medicine

<1.0

Aviation Space and Environmental Medicine

1.9

Behavior Research Methods

<1.0

Biology of Sport

3.7

British Journal of Sports Medicine

1.9

Clinical Biomechanics

1.6

Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine

2.4

Clinics in Sports Medicine

1.5

Current Sports Medicine Reports

<1.0

Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Sportmedizin

 

Electromyography and Motor Control

1.7

Ergonomics

2.7

European Journal of Applied Physiology

1.2

European Journal of Sport Science

<1.0

European Review of Aging and Physical Activity

 

European Sports History Review

7.1

Exercise and Immunology Review

5.3

Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews

 

Frontiers in Movement Science and Sport Psychology

2.0

Gait and Posture

2.1

High Altitude Medicine and Biology

2.1

Human Movement Science

0.2

International Journal of Athletic Therapy & Training

 

International Journal of Coaching Science

 

International Journal of Computer Science in Sport

7.0

International Journal of Epidemiology

<1.0?

International Journal of History of Sport

0.5 

International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport

1.9

International J of Sport Nutrition & Exercise Metabolism

<1.0

International Journal of Sport Finance

<0.1?

International J of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship

<1.0

International Journal of Sport Psychology

2.3

International Journal of Sports Medicine

2.2

International J of Sports Physiology & Performance

<1.0

International J of Sports Science & Coaching

 

International Quarterly of Sport Science

<1.0?

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

<1.0?

International Sportmed Journal

 

International Sports Journal

<1.0

Isokinetics and Exercise Science

 

Japanese Journal of Physical Fitness and Sport

1.9

Journal of Aging and Physical Activity

<1.0

Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis

1.1

Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

1.3

Journal of Applied Biomechanics

3.5

Journal of Applied Physiology

4.8

Journal of Applied Psychology

1.2

Journal of Applied Sport Psychology

1.7

Journal of Athletic Training

2.7

Journal of Biomechanics

 

Journal of Combat Sports and Martial Arts

 

Journal of Comparative Physical Education & Sport

1.6

Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology

3.4

Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

 

Journal of Exercise Physiology Online

<1.0

Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness

<1.0

Journal of Human Kinetics

 

Journal of Human Movement Studies

 

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

 

Journal of Human Sport and Exercise

1.8

Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition

 

Journal of Motor Learning and Development

<1.0

Journal of Leisure Research

1.0

Journal of Motor Behaviour

1.9

Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine

3.0

Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy

<1.0

Journal of the Philosophy of Sport

1.9

Journal of Physical Activity and Health

 

Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, & Dance

4.4

Journal of Physiology

 

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports

2.9

Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport

2.5

Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology

1.3

Journal of Sport and Social Issues

 

Journal of Sport Behavior

<1.0

Journal of Sport Economics

 

Journal of Sport History

<1.0

Journal of Sport Management

<1.0

Journal of Sport Rehabilitation

<1.0

Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness

<1.0

Journal of Sports Science and Medicine

2.1

Journal of Sports Sciences

 

Journal of Sports Traumatology

1.8

Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research

 

Journal of Swimming Research

<1.0

Journal of Teaching in Physical Education

<1.0

Kinesiology

1.0

Leisure Sciences

<1.0

Leisure Studies

 

Measurement in Physical Education & Exercise Science

<1.0

Medicina dello Sport

4.5

Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise

 

Medicine and Sport Science

1.4

Motor Control

1.6

Pediatric Exercise Science

 

Pediatric Physical Therapy

<1.0

Perceptual and Motor Skills

0.8

Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy

 

Physical Educator

1.4

Physical Therapy in Sport

1.3

Physician and Sportsmedicine

1.7

Psychology of Sport and Exercise

<1.0

Quest

1.1

Research in Sports Medicine

1.1

Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport

3.2

Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports

<1.0

Science and Sports

<1.0

Sociology of Sport Journal

 

Sport History Review

1.2

Sport, Education, and Society

1.0

(The) Sport Psychologist

<1.0

Sports Biomechanics

 

Sports Exercise and Injury

5.2

Sports Medicine

 

Sports Technology

<1.0

Sportverletzung-Sportschaden

<1.0

Strength and Conditioning Journal

 

Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal

 

Thomson Reuters is the publisher and copyright owner of the Journal Citation Reports®.
Impact factors listed in this article are used with the express permission of Thomson Reuters.

 

Published Oct 2013

©2013