RE: Blackwell Announces High Growth in Impact Factor

["David Davis" <ddavis@copyright.com>]

I think an answer to Mr. Prosser's question might entail an 
answer to this one:

Statistically speaking, for any given article (and by 
composition, any given journal, or set of journals from any given 
publisher) is the IF absolute, or relative?

I mean, is it determined primarily by the total number of cites ( 
I would call this absolute), or is its variance more relative to 
the citedness of the other articles in the year for which it is 
measured? Or is it a mix of these? (Or quite possibly I am off 
the mark altogether ;-) ).

Other factors come into play as well, but perhaps we could start 
some clarifying by going down this route.

Dave Davis