Other Documents

Here I offer a hodge-podge of documents that I have written on a variety of topics.

Measuring Scholarly Impact

I have recently become interested in the question of how to assess the quality and impact of both academic journals and individual publications. Existing impact metrics abound, and most have been appropriately criticized, but people haven't stopped using them. I think this is because they tap a real need - scholars are busy, and use any shortcuts they can to make decisions about what journals to keep track of, where to send their work, and how to evaluate the work of others.

The document below offers a simple, easy to calcuate metric that can help researchers quickly assess the impact of a journal relative to other journals in the same category (e.g., sociology). It has not been published, and may change in the future.

Miles, Andrew. 2015. "The Category Normalized Journal Impact Factor: A More Meaningful Way of Assessing Journal Impact Across Subject Categories."

I propose a modified version of the Journal Impact Factor score that provides a direct assessment of a journal's impact relative to other journals in its subject category. This measure is also normalized in a way that makes comparisons across subject categories possible.