Comparing MCQ with JIF2 and JIF5 for Mathematical Journals

The purpose of this paper is to compare Mathematical Citation Quotient (MCQ)، as a tool of mathematical science citation analysis، with Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in both 2-year and 5-year impact factors. MCQ is represented in the 2005 version of MathSciNet with special selected journals named as the Reference List Journals (RLJ). This study is an investigation of pure mathematics journals listed in JCR database. A comparison of the relative overlap for the journals shows that relative overlap of RLJ in JCR is equal to 72. 2 percent. In this research، MCQ has been compared with JIF2 and JIF5. The average of JIF2 and JIF5 are higher than the average of journals'' MCQ. Comparison of correlations shows that in general MCQ has a strong and direct correlation with JIF2 and JIF5، but when journals are put in deciles، we get different results. By comparing averages we show that in any deciles، averages of JIF2 and JIF5 are more than MCQ. In some deciles، we have various correlations and even negative ones. A comparison between MCQ and JIF2 shows that only in the first deciles the correlation is strong and direct and in the deciles 2، 7 and 8، there is a weak direct correlation. In the other deciles one observes some negative correlations. A comparison between MCQ and JIF5 shows that the correlation is strong only in the first deciles and direct and in the others there are weak correlations، in particular، in deciles 6، 8، 9 and 10 the correlations are negative. This article advises American Mathematical Society to extend the coverage of RLJ and suggest pure mathematics departments to take care of usage of JIF2، rather MCQ may be a good source for evaluating researches of their academic members.