Determining the impact factor and immediacy index of Persian medical journals in 2006

Impact factor is still a suitable index of evaluating effectiveness of medical journals. The present study was designed to determine the impact factor and immediacy index of Persian medical journals in order to aware authors and librarians of journals status.

For this analytical study, impact factor of 38 Persian medical journals (of 90 approved medical journals as "Academic Research Journal" by the Journal Commission of Ministry of Health) was determined by citation analysis. Papers’ references were used to calculate the impact factor.

Totally, 1586 papers, 2673 Persian references were entered in the analysis. the most effective journals were: “Education in Medical Science” (IF=0.232), Iranian Journal of Endocrine Diseases and Metabolism” (IF=0.105) and “Blood” (IF=0.098). Meanwhile, “Journal of Research in Medicine (Pejouhesh Dar Pezeshki)” has the highest immediacy index (0.133).

Results revealed the low rate of Persian paper citation among Iranian authors, therefore, the associated impact factor is quite low.