Journal features and impact factor

Purpose – Journal quality and prestige are the main considerations for researchers, editors, and publishers when submitting manuscripts, citing papers, and developing publishing policies. Journal Citation Reports calculates the impact factor (IF) from journals covered in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). IF is widely considered as an indicator of journal quality and prestige among business disciplines. Thus, researching what affects the IF is critical. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between journal features and the IF, particularly between “hot issues” and the IF, and categorizes journal rankings into top-ten and other journals. Design/methodology/approach – The research sample encompasses publications from 2003 to 2013, focussing specifically on SSCI journals in the categories of business and finance. The examined journal features are the effect of the newly selected as an SSCI journal, frequency of publication, self-citation ratio, citable items, and whether the journal features articles on relevant international economic topics. Findings – The findings are as follows: increasing the publishing frequencies of top-ten journals will elevate IF significantly, conversely, increasing that of other journals will degrade the expected IF; both top-ten and other journals with a high self-citation ratio have a low IF; and publishing papers on critical topics significantly positively affects the IF; however, the level of significance decreases over time. In summary, publishing research on critical topics significantly increases the IF in short term. Originality/value – The findings offer valuable information for researchers, editors, and publishers.