ABSTRACT

Impact factor (IF) is used to measure the quality of scientific journals and calculated with the number of articles and citation of the articles in the journals. IF of the journals can be affected from factors other than the quality of the journals. These factors include, not using all of the articles in a journal in the calculation, basing the calculation on the last two years, if the journal is included in Science Scientation Index, the mistakes in spelling of the references and self-citations. Despite the shortcomings of the IF, most of the authors think that IF is a good method to measure the quality of scientific journals as there is not a beter alternative.