Analysis of Generalized Impact Factors and the Indices of Journals

Analyzing the relationships among the parameters for quantifying the quality of research published in journals is a challenging task. In this paper, we analyze the relationships between the impact factor, h-index, and g-index of a journal. To keep our analysis simple and easy to understand, we consider a generalized version of the impact factor where there is no time window. In the absence of the time window, the impact factor converges to the number of citations received per paper. This is not only justified for the impact factor, it also simplifies the analysis of the h-index and g-index as well because addition of a time window in the form of years complicates the computation of indices too. We derive the expressions for the relationships among impact factor, h index, and g-index and validate them using a given set of publication-citation data.