A meta-analysis of impact factors of astrophysics journals
arXiv:2410.03342 · doi:10.1140/epjp/s13360-025-06397-8
Abstract
We calculate the 2024 impact factors for the 38 most widely used journals in Astrophysics, using the citations collated by NASA/ADS (Astrophysics Data System) and compare them to the official impact factors. This includes journals which publish papers outside of astrophysics such as PRD, EPJC, Nature, etc. We also propose a new metric to gauge the impact factor based on the median number of citations in a journal and calculate the same for all the journals. We find that the ADS-based impact factors are mostly in agreement, albeit higher than the official impact factors for most journals. The journals with the maximum fractional difference in median-based and old impact factors are JHEAP and PTEP. We find the maximum difference between the ADS and official impact factor for Nature.
10 pages, 2 figures. More journals added. Also added miscellaneous publication statistics as well as APC details. Accepted for publication in EPJP