On Size, Growth and Impact of Life Science Journals

Measuring the growth of fields and subfields has been carried out using publication output in different fields. However, not all published literature contribute to the growth of a discipline and thus the publications with impact alone are being used in many recent studies. In measuring subfield growth, general impact is not considered as a suitable parameter. Scientometricians have resorted for subfield impact to study the subfields for observing growth, impact etc. In this study, both general impact of journals in a field (impact factor) and subfield impact (subfield corrected impact factor) are used to measure the growth, size and impact of subfields in life sciences.