Submitted:
21 April 2022
Posted:
21 April 2022
You are already at the latest version
Abstract
A toy model for the distribution of the impact factor (IF) of a journal is proposed. The model demonstrates the presence of a heavy tail for the IF distribution, which occurs due to some random non-scientific circumstances. Therefore, the use of IF as an indicator of the quality of scientific papers seems to be inadequate.
Keywords:
citation distribution
; impact factor distribution
; essential randomness
; Sibuya distribution.
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