However, the Impact Factor is primarily related to journals, meaning the average number of citations received by articles in a journal within a two years frame. It is important to stress that citation rates vary between research fields.
For example, life sciences have more portugal rcs data citations than social sciences. There are several factors that contribute to this, such as the countries in which researchers work and publish, their age and academic status. Also, there is a difference in approaches to reviewing and citing life sciences, especially medicine, compared to the social sciences. As stated in the Leiden manifesto:
“Top-ranked journals in mathematics have impact factors of around 3; top-ranked journals in cell biology have impact factors of about 30.”
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The logic behind “impact-factor obsession” goes like this: if I publish my research in a journal with a high Journal Impact Factor, that means that my research will have more impact than if it was published in a low-impact journal. The higher the Journal Impact Factor, the higher the impact of an individual research will be. But is that really true.