Whether you're reviewing the literature and reading journal articles, writing and publishing your research in a journal, or assessing your CV and research career progression, understanding how to evaluate journals and research impact is crucial. 

While the Journal Impact Factor is an important metric for measuring the impact of a journal, it should not be assumed that individual articles within that journal, or authors who publish in that journal have corresponding impact. To measure the impact of an article or an author, make sure you're using appropriate metrics. 

Article-Level Metrics

The most common way to measure the impact of an article is to check its citations, or to see how many times it has been cited in other works after it's been published. However, not everything can be measure in citations, so altmetrics, or alternative metrics, look for other indications of engagement with the work, like downloads or social media mentions. 

Author-Level Metrics

The most common way to gauge an individual researcher's overall influence is through the h-index, which balances the number of publications with how frequently those works have been cited. Another simple metric, often used by Google Scholar, is the i10-index, which counts only the number of an author's papers that have received at least ten citations. While useful for quick comparisons, these metrics generally reflect higher values for established researchers and should always be considered within the context of the author's specific academic discipline.