Impact Factors

Impact Factors are used within Science and Medicine as a method of rating journals and the articles published in them. An impact factor is measured by calculating the number of times articles within the journal were cited during the previous two years, divided by the number of 'citable items' (i.e. articles, letter etc) published in the journal during that time.

Impact factors are one way that researchers evaluate the quality of a paper - by seeing how 'good' the journal it is published in is, based on how many other papers have referred back to items published within that journal.

However, the impact factor is given for a journal title, so does not evaluate specific articles - an article in a journal with a high impact factor may have very few citations and vice versa.


How to find the impact factor for a journal...

Go to the e-Library and select the Find Database option.

From the A-Z list select 'W' and choose Web of Knowledge.

On the Web of Knowledge homepage select the yellow "Additional Resources" tab.

On the next screen, select "Journal Citiation Reports". From the options that appear, select "Search for a Specific Journal" and submit. Enter the journal title and click Search.

The database indexes thousands of publications, however it does not cover every journal published, so if your journal is not found then it is not covered by the Journal Citation Reports.

Science Direct

You can access Science Direct via the Find Database section of e-Library or directly via http://www.sciencedirect.com/. You may find you have problems getting to the full text of journal articles in Science Direct if you are accessing from off campus – you need to make sure you have logged in with Athens to the site before you will be able to access full text content. Follow the instructions below to log in with your Athens details.


From the home page, click the “Athens/Institutional Login” link in the top right hand corner.

On the next screen:

Click the ‘Athens login’ link. You are then taken to a screen that asks for your Athens login details – remember they are case-sensitive so enter the username (sal…) in lower case and your password in upper case.






You can now start searching and should see green icons next to content you have access to through Salford University.

You can search in the grey Quick Search bar at the top of the homepage, or for more options click the Search button. You can search by keywords, or find a journal and search or browse within that.

Can’t find the journal you are looking for? Go back to the e-Library and go through Find e-Journal to see if Salford subscribe through another provider.