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arXiv · 2410.03342

A meta-analysis of impact factors of astrophysics journals

Rayani Venkat Sai Rithvik·Shantanu Desai
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Abstract

We calculate the 2024 impact factors for the 38 most widely used journals in Astrophysics, using the citations collated by NASA/ADS (Astrophysics Data System) and compare them to the official impact factors. This includes journals which publish papers outside of astrophysics such as PRD, EPJC, Nature, etc. We also propose a new metric to gauge the impact factor based on the median number of citations in a journal and calculate the same for all the journals. We find that the ADS-based impact factors are mostly in agreement, albeit higher than the official impact factors for most journals. The journals with the maximum fractional difference in median-based and old impact factors are JHEAP and PTEP. We find the maximum difference between the ADS and official impact factor for Nature.

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Rayani Venkat Sai Rithvik, Shantanu Desai. 2024-10-04. A meta-analysis of impact factors of astrophysics journals. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-025-06397-8

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