Impact factor (if) of hospitality, leisure, sports & tourism journals: current trends, overall ranking and temporal stability over a four year period

A journal’s “impact factor” (IF) is the bibliometric index that reflects the frequency with which an ‘‘average article’’ from a scientific journal has been cited in subsequent publications.The purpose of the present study is to examine the current impact factor of Hospitality, Leisure, Sports & Tourism journals, their overall ranking and temporal stability over a four year period. For this reason, we have included the impact factor of the scientific journals classifiedin the “Hospitality, Leisure, Sports & Tourism” subject category of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database from 2007 to 2010. Available data indicates that during this period, 34 journals were added to the aforementioned category and the average impact factor rose from 0.86 in 2007 to 0.99 in 2010. Therefore, ‘‘Hospitality, Leisure, Sports & Tourism” journals’impact factor remained relatively stable during the four years examined.