Editing Impact factor (section)

===Counterfeit impact factors===
Fake impact factors or bogus impact factors are produced by certain companies or individuals.<ref name=fake>{{cite journal |vauthors=Jalalian M |title=The story of fake impact factor companies and how we detected them |journal=Electronic Physician |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=1069–72 |year=2015 |pmid=26120416 |pmc=4477767 |doi=10.14661/2015.1069-1072}}</ref> According to an article published in the ''Electronic Physician'', these include Global Impact Factor, Citefactor, and Universal Impact Factor.<ref name="fake"/> [[Jeffrey Beall]] maintained a list of such misleading metrics.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://scholarlyoa.com/other-pages/misleading-metrics/ |title=Misleading Metrics |work=Scholarly Open Access |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170111172311/https://scholarlyoa.com/other-pages/misleading-metrics/ |archive-date=2017-01-11}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://beallslist.net/misleading-metrics/ |title=Misleading Metrics – Beall's List}}</ref> Another deceitful practice is reporting "alternative impact factors", calculated as the average number of citations per article using [[citation indices]] other than JCR such as [[Google Scholar]] (e.g., "Google-based Journal Impact Factor") or [[Microsoft Academic]].<ref name="XiaSmith2018">{{cite journal |vauthors=Xia J, Smith MP |title=Alternative journal impact factors in open access publishing |journal=Learned Publishing |volume=31 |issue=4 |year=2018 |pages=403–411 |issn=0953-1513 |doi=10.1002/leap.1200 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

False impact factors are often used by [[predatory publishers]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://scholarlyoa.com/tag/fake-impact-factors/ |title=Scholarly Open-Access – Fake impact factors |vauthors=Beall J |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160321063637/https://scholarlyoa.com/tag/fake-impact-factors/ |archive-date=2016-03-21}}</ref><ref>{{cite report |title=Discussion document: Predatory Publishing |publisher=Committee on Publication Ethics |date=2019-11-01 |doi=10.24318/cope.2019.3.6 |page=|doi-access=free }}</ref> Consulting Journal Citation Reports' master journal list can confirm if a publication is [[journal indexing|indexed]] by the ''Journal Citation Reports''.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://mjl.clarivate.com/ |title=Master Journal List |website=Web of Science Group |publisher=Clarivate}}</ref> The use of fake impact metrics is considered a [[Red flag (idiom)|red flag]].<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Ebrahimzadeh MH |title=Validated Measures of Publication Quality: Guide for Novice Researchers to Choose an Appropriate Journal for Paper Submission |journal=The Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=94–6 |date=April 2016 |pmid=27200383 |pmc=4852052}}</ref>