Abstract :
The journal impact factors, published by the Institute for
Scientific Information (ISI; Philadelphia, PA), are widely
known and are used to evaluate overall journal quality
and the quality of the papers published therein. However,
when making comparisons between subject fields,
the work of individual scientists and their research institutions
as reflected in their articles’ ISI impact factors
can become meaningless. This inequality will remain as
long as ISI impact factors are employed as an instrument
to assess the quality of international research. Here we
propose a new mathematical index entitled Impact Factor
Point Average (IFPA) for assessment of the quality of
individual research work in different subject fields. The
index is established based on a normalization of differences
in impact factors, rankings, and number of journal
titles in different subject fields. The proposed index is
simple and enables the ISI impact factors to be used
with equality, especially when evaluating the quality of
research work in different subject fields
