The journal impact factors (IFs) for 2013 were released recently. The IF is the number of citations to articles published in a journal during the preceding 2 years. Only journals indexed in the Web of Science database have an IF. That database includes more than 12 000 journals, but currently there are only 106 nursing journals in it, which is why so few nursing journals have an IF. Nurse Educator is 1 of only 5 nursing education journals with an IF, and our IF for 2013 was 0.667, in line with the other education journals. Journals that publish research reports, literature reviews, and articles with long reference lists tend to have higher IFs because those articles are cited frequently by others. In the 2-year period used to calculate IFs, Nurse Educator published no systematic or literature reviews and had many articles with short reference lists. IFs are based on citations and do not reflect the quality of the articles or journal. If you gain new ideas from articles in Nurse Educator and use them in your teaching, then we are having "impact."

Submitted by: Marilyn H. Oermann, PhD, RN, ANEF, FAAN, Editor-in-Chief, mailto:[email protected].