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(Stroke. 2001;32:2729.)
© 2001 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

The Impact of Impact Factors

Vladimir Hachinski, MD, DSc, Editor-in-Chief

From the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.

Correspondence to Dr Vladimir Hachinski, University of Western Ontario, University Hospital, 339 Windermere Rd, PO Box 5339, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5A5.

Key Words: editor • stroke

When impact factors rise, editors editorialize. When they fall, editors fall silent. The impact factor of Stroke has risen from 5.53 in 1999 to 6.008 in 2000. It is time to editorialize. These statistics reaffirm Stroke as the leading publication in the field, place it among the top 3 clinical neurological journals along with Brain and the Annals of Neurology, and make it the leading subspeciality journal in neurology and one of the top publications in peripheral vascular disease. This impact factor was achieved under the editorship of Dr Mark L. Dyken. We congratulate him, his editorial team, the reviewers, and the authors who chose to submit to Stroke and who contributed to such a milestone. While we appreciate our newly gained status, we also understand that there are other measures of quality and other considerations, particularly the main purpose of our journal to publish: "Reports of clinical and basic investigation of any aspect of the cerebral circulation and its diseases" (from Stroke Instructions to Authors).

The idea of an impact factor goes back to the 1950s and its use to the early 1960s.¹ The numerator consists of "the number of citations in the current year, to any items published in the previous two years" and the denominator consists of "the number of substantive articles (source items) published in the same two years."¹ This definition is like an overcoat, ample but unrevealing, since "substantive articles" can and are defined in various ways by the compilers of the impact factor.

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