Abstract:

This paper analyzes the time problem of traditional impact factor and thinks the traditional impact factor is neither stock index, nor the flow index. Besides the calculated data is half second years citations, half of the first year of citation frequency, so there is a logical error in time. And then we propose a new and improved indicator—R impact factor, that is to say, citation times after the paper is published in the journal in the first year, the second year. Then, based on CSSCI’s(2014—2015) library, information and documentation science journals and Chinese HowNet citation data, we conduct an empirical analysis. The result shows that traditional impact factor exists a big calculation error because of the lagging of many journals citation peak, while R impact factor only has few journals citation peak lags, which greatly reduces the computational errors.

Key words: Impact factor, R impact factor, Time error, Revise