The most widely accepted definition of health impact assessment (HIA), from a consensus conference in Gothenburg organised by the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) European Centre for Health Policy, defines HIA as ‘a combination of procedures, methods and tools by which a policy, programme or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a population, and the distribution o...

The Impact Factor is the most popular numerical measure of a scientist's work. Despite many well-documented flaws, the Impact Factor is commonly used in recruitment, appointment, and funding decisions. A diverse group of stakehold-ers is now making a concerted effort to combat misuse of the Impact Factor and is calling for the development of more accurate measures to assess research. The group ...

Editor, The journal’s impact factor is at present, considered a yard stick for measuring the relative quality and significance of a journal. It is defined as the frequency with which the ‘average article’ in a journal has been cited in a particular year or period. For a given year, this is calculated as the total number of citations received in that year to articles published in the previous tw...

The research community is under increasing pressure to document the impact of its activities. One of the root causes of this pressure is the entirely reasonable desire on the part of the funders of research—and ultimately society at large—to know what benefits they are accruing on their investments. Done judiciously, an ongoing assessment of the impact of research would be a good thing for all ...

Accessible online at: www.karger.com/ned This last issue of 2003 brings excellent news to the readers, editorial board, and publishers of Neuroepidemiology. According to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Neuroepidemiology increased its impact factor (IF) to 2.139 in 2002 from 1.390 in 2001. This culminates an upward 5-year trend that reflects the increasing quality of the work sub...

RESEARCH PAPERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE PUBLISHED IN THOUSANDS OF SCIENCE journals every year. The quality of these papers clearly has to be evaluated, not only to determine their accuracy and contribution to fields of research, but also to help make informed decisions about rewarding scientists with funding and appointments to research positions. One measure often used to determine the qua...

Over the past few years, increasing efforts have been made to evaluate research output using different markers of quality. This is most clearly reflected by the work of the Research Exercise Framework, a huge undertaking that was completed in 2014 and ranked subject areas in all UK universities according to the societal impact of research and the environment in which it was conducted, alongside...

Section Editor: Shahram Lotfipour, MD, MPH Submission history: Submitted October 10, 2017; Accepted October 11, 2017 Electronically published October 16, 2017 Full text available through open access at http://escholarship.org/uc/uciem_westjem DOI: 10.5811/westjem.2017.10.36756 [West J Emerg Med. 2017;18(6)980–981.] University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, Department of Emergency Med...