Drug Testing and Analysis' one‐year impact factor (2012)

We are pleased to announce that with the release of the October 2011 Journal Citation Reports © (JCR) from Thomson Reuters© Drug Testing and Analysis (DTA) has received its first one-year impact factor of 1.667. What is a one-year impact factor? The usual impact factor associated with a journal (the two-year impact factor) is calculated from citations in a census year to articles published in the previous two years. For the 2010 impact factor, the calculation is derived as the number of citations from articles published in 2010 to articles published in 2009 and 2008. These citations are then divided by the number of substantive articles published by the journal in the 2009 and 2008 period. DTA's one-year impact factor by comparison, is calculated by the number of citations from articles published in 2010 to articles published in 2009 only. These citations are divided by the number of substantive articles published by the journal in 2009. We know from bibliometric analysis that the citation rate to articles in the second year of the impact factor window (in the 2010 example above; citations from 2010 to articles published in 2008) have a greater citation gain (Figure 1 offers an example of the citation profile of all research articles in JCR's Spectroscopy category over a nine-year period). These earlier published articles (those from 2008) are absent from DTA's one-year impact factor and as such, the 1.667 figure is not indicative of the journals full two-year impact factor. Comparisons with DTA's present score and the two-year impact factors of other journals should be used with caution. So 1.667 is the average time each article is cited, right? Describing the impact factor as an average and attributing the figure to the journal's constituent articles is somewhat misleading. First, the impact factor is not a mathematical average; only substantive articles are counted in the denominator while both substantive and ephemera materials contribute to the numerator. Secondly, prescribing the impact factor as a sum of its parts will serve to underestimate the most cited and overestimate the least cited articles.1 Only a quarter of DTA's articles are cited anywhere near the mean citation per paper (based on citations from 2010 to all articles published in 2009) and only 15% of the 2009 publications are cited anywhere near the one-year impact factor score. DTA would like to thank and recognize our top-cited authors for submitting their impactful research to DTA while the journal was in its infancy. Your support of the journal in its formative years is greatly appreciated. Christian Reichel for his article SDS-PAGE of recombinant and endogenous erythropoietins: benefits and limitations of the method for application in doping control;2 Ilkka Ojanperä for Generic sample preparation and dual polarity liquid chromatography - time-of-flight mass spectrometry for high-throughput screening in doping analysis;3 Thomas Piper for his article 13 C/12 C Ratios of endogenous urinary steroids investigated for doping control purposes;4 and Simon Brandt for Analyses of second-generation legal highs in the UK: Initial findings.5 There are many more authors and contributors who deserve thanks for their contributions, unfortunately too many than can be afforded by this short editorial. On behalf of DTA, we extend our deepest gratitude to you all.