I've added an immediacy index to the list of journals at http://law.wlu.edu/library/research/lawrevs/mostcited.asp (click on the column header labeled "Immediacy 2003" to sort the journals). As of mid-December the Immediacy Index is a bit of an experiment. The figures are based on the number of articles citing each journal's articles dated 2003, where the citing articles are themselves dated 2003. The calculation is made for each journal by dividing the number of citing articles from 2003 by the number of articles that the cited journal published in 2003. This is a method for comparing how rapidly the average article in a particular journal will be discovered and cited. To date, only U.S. general and most of the U.S. specialized journals have been included. Note that the ranking has a bias against journals that publish more of their articles toward the end of the year. Note also that the numbers of articles are generally low, so if for example a journal only published 6 articles in 2003, but had one successful article that was cited in 30 articles, then the journal would come out on top of the immediacy index on the strength of just that one article. Methodologically these immediacy index figures have the same weakness as those for the other rankings - citations to articles may have been missed if non-standard citations were used, and counts of articles published (as reported by ILP, Westlaw, or Lexis) are not always consistent or reliable.
Posted by doyle at December 19, 2004 12:34 PM