A much more reliable journal rating criterion already exists: it is called "Cited half-life".
If you log in to ISI Web of Knowledge, choose Journal Citation Reports, select "JCR Science edition 2007", "View a group of journals by "Subject Category"", then select "PHYSICS, MATHEMATICAL", and "View Journal Data - sort by "Cited Half-Life", you will see a list of 43 journals. The top ones, with tied scores of >10.0, are COMMUNICATIONS IN MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS, JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS, JOURNAL OF STATISTICAL PHYSICS and a few more that everyone in the field knows are actually the journals of choice, while the two quack journals CHAOS SOLITONS & FRACTALS and INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NONLINEAR SCIENCES AND NUMERICAL SIMULATION appear, respectively, as nos. 35 and 38 with scores of 3 and 2.2. If you eliminate the 15-20 journals that are misclassified by Thomson-Reuters as Mathematical Physics, and a couple more that have only been in existence for 2-3 years, these two quack journals come dead last.
If, on the other hand, you "View journal data - sort by "Impact Factor", these two journals appear as nos. 2 and no. 1, with IF scores of 5.099 and 3.025, respectively, while, e.g., the widely used, well regarded JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS appears only as no. 26 with an IF score of 1.137.
It is not hard to explain why the Impact Factor score has little or nothing to do with actual merit or genuine impact, while the "Cited Half-Life" has everything to do with it. Just think about it. Is progress in science based upon popularity polls, self-referencing or juggling of hermetic terminology? Or on careful verification of the validity of new results, confirmed by competent experts over an extended period of time?
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A much more reliable journal rating criterion already exists: it is called "Cited half-life". If you log in to ISI Web of Knowledge, choose Journal Citation Reports, select "JCR Science edition 2007", "View a group of journals by "Subject Category"", then select "PHYSICS, MATHEMATICAL", and "View Journal Data - sort by "Cited Half-Life", you will see a list of 43 journals. The top ones, with tied scores of >10.0, are COMMUNICATIONS IN MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS, JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS, JOURNAL OF STATISTICAL PHYSICS and a few more that everyone in the field knows are actually the journals of choice, while the two quack journals CHAOS SOLITONS & FRACTALS and INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NONLINEAR SCIENCES AND NUMERICAL SIMULATION appear, respectively, as nos. 35 and 38 with scores of 3 and 2.2. If you eliminate the 15-20 journals that are misclassified by Thomson-Reuters as Mathematical Physics, and a couple more that have only been in existence for 2-3 years, these two quack journals come dead last. If, on the other hand, you "View journal data - sort by "Impact Factor", these two journals appear as nos. 2 and no. 1, with IF scores of 5.099 and 3.025, respectively, while, e.g., the widely used, well regarded JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS appears only as no. 26 with an IF score of 1.137. It is not hard to explain why the Impact Factor score has little or nothing to do with actual merit or genuine impact, while the "Cited Half-Life" has everything to do with it. Just think about it. Is progress in science based upon popularity polls, self-referencing or juggling of hermetic terminology? Or on careful verification of the validity of new results, confirmed by competent experts over an extended period of time?