Journal Impact Factors for Thai Academic Journals : Part I. Preliminary Research Results

Abstract

This article aimed to report the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) of articles published in 68 Thai academic journals within the scope of this article, the calculations of the JIF being based on those by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). This was the first time that the impact factors of the Thai academic journals were investigated. This work was restricted to only 68 journals being cited during the last five years (from 1996 to 2000). The results showed that only six journals; namely, (i) Songklanakarin Journal of Science and Technology, (ii) Kasetsart Journal: Natural Science, (iii) Entomology and Zoology Gazette, (iv) Ladkrabang Engineering Journal, (v) Suranaree Journal of Science and Technology and (vi) Chulalongkorn Medical Journal, have been cited continuously (being estimated to be 8.8% of the journal numbers in this work). In addition, it was notieable that articles published in longer journal age tended to have greater opportunity to be cited and higher journal impact factor. The average impact factor of the journal swithin the scope of this article was calculated to be 0.069, suggesting that the possibility of an article published in a national journal to be cited was approximately 6.9%. Further work based on these preliminary results would be considering the existing method of calculating the impact factor whether or not it is suitable for Thai academic journals, also developing a more suitable alternative method for the impact factor calculation for the Thai journals, and its applications.