Wikimedia, VmenkovThe influence of high-impact factor journals is declining, according to a study published this week (November 7) in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. The findings raise questions over the relationship between the impact-factor—the current best measure of a publication’s influence—and the number of citations subsequently received by papers published in that journal.

Analyzing a sample of around 820 million citations in 25 million articles published between 1990 and 2009, researchers at the University of Montreal found that the proportion of the world’s most-cited articles published in traditional powerhouse journals like Nature, Science, Cell, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has sharply declined over the past 2 decades. In 1990, nearly half of the top 5 percent of articles—those that received most citations over the following 2 years—were published in the top 5 percent highest impact factor journals....