[Insight-developers] Nature Article: Why Journal Impact Factors are Irrelevant

[Luis Ibanez]

and more here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6134/787.full

(from May 2013)

Bruce Alberts is Editor-in-Chief of Science.

<quote>

This Editorial coincides with the release of the San Francisco declaration
on research Assessment (DORA), the outcome of a gathering of concerned
scientists at the December 2012 meeting of the American Society for Cell
Biology.* To correct distortions in the evaluation of scientific research,
DORA aims to stop the use of the "journal impact factor" in judging an
individual scientist's work.

....

The impact factor, a number calculated annually for each scientific journal
based on the average number of times its articles have been referenced in
other articles, was never intended to be used to evaluate individual
scientists, but rather as a measure of journal quality. However, it has
been increasingly misused in this way, with scientists now being ranked by
weighting each of their publications according to the impact factor of the
journal in which it appeared. For this reason, I have seen curricula vitae
in which a scientist annotates each of his or her publications with its
journal impact factor listed to three significant decimal places (for
example, 11.345). And in some nations, publication in a journal with an
impact factor below 5.0 is officially of zero value. As frequently pointed
out by leading scientists, this impact factor mania makes no sense.†

....

But perhaps the most destructive result of any automated scoring of a
researcher's quality is the "me-too science" that it encourages. Any
evaluation system in which the mere number of a researcher's publications
increases his or her score creates a strong disincentive to pursue risky
and potentially groundbreaking work, because it takes years to create a new
approach in a new experimental context, during which no publications should
be expected. Such metrics further block innovation because they encourage
scientists to work in areas of science that are already highly populated,
as it is only in these fields that large numbers of scientists can be
expected to reference one's work, no matter how outstanding.

</quote>
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