| dc.description.abstract |
E-print archives (electronic preprints) have become the first choice of many researchers for current
research, breaking scientific discoveries, and keeping up with colleagues (and competitors) at
other institutions. The citations being received to e-prints are evidences of the above stated importance
of the archives. Impact Factor and Immediacy Index devised by Thomson Scientific Inc. (formerly
Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Philadelphia) are two parameters based on citations to
evaluate traditional journals. These parameters for nearly 6000 scientific journals from all over the
world are published yearly as Journal Citation Reports (JCR). As a case study, the present work has
made an endeavour to calculate impact factors and immediacy indices of archives uploaded in the
Physics categories of arXiv.org of Cornell University, USA by treating them as individual journals.
The Physics e-prints uploaded in arXiv.org are classified into twelve sub-categories: viz. AstroPhysics
(astro-ph); Condensed Matter (cond-mat); General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc);
High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex); High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat); High Energy
Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th); Mathematical Physics
(math-ph); Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex); Nuclear Theory (nucl-th); General Physics (Physics);
and Quantum Physics (quant-ph). Calculated impact factors and immediacy indices reveal that
Nuclear Experiment has made good impact among the categories and followed by High-Energy
Physics classes of arXiv.org (High Energy Physics – Theory; High Energy Physics – Lattice; High
Energy Physics – Experiment; and High Energy Physics - Phenomenology). The citation trackers
like Scopus and web-tools like ‘Google-Scholar’, ‘Citebase’, ‘Citeseer’ etc. will further strengthen
the concluded impact of the archives. |
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