Do fixed citation windows affect the impact maturation rates of scientific journals?

Scientific fields employ distinct citation practices. As such, bibliometric indicators based on citations need to be standardized to allow comparisons between fields. This paper examines more than six hundred journals in eight jcr categories. Results indicate that impact maturation rates vary considerably from one category to another. The time elapsed until the citation distribution reaches a maximum oscillates between two and five years; hence the opening and closing of the citation window is crucial to the impact factor. Some journals are penalized by the two-year impact factor and benefited by the five-year impactfactor, and the reverse situation was also found. Nonetheless, there are impact factors of variable citation windows that produce closer measures of central tendency.