Impact factor calculation based on Google scholar

Abstract

An Impact factor is a ratio used as a measure of reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in academic journal. It is often used for measuring the relative importance of a journal within its field and compare it to other journals of the same field to deem which journal is more important.

To compute impact factor, a program was developed based on data retrieve from Google Scholar and informatik websites. The program crawls through web pages to retrieve the relevant data and stores it into a local database before computing the impact factor result.

However, there are certain obstacles to overcome in developing the software to meet the objective. Obstacles such as servers trying to detect and block automated querying like web crawlers deter the program from retrieving the relevant data needed. To overcome these obstacles, strategies and techniques have to be creatively thought out and deployed. With the strategies and technology used, the Impact Factor Calculator program was developed and is able to successfully calculate impact factors for scientific journals.

There are other programs like Publish or Perish that retrieves and analysis academic citations but it does not have the impact factor calculator. Hence, the need to build a impact factor calculator tool.