Whenever people start discussing impact factors, I like to call to their attention this paper from Current Biology that was written by Peter Lawrence of Cambridge. PA Lawrence, the mismeasurement of science http://making-of-a-fly.me/files/pdf/mism_science.pdf I have included an excerpt here: "Answer from the hero in Leo Szilard’s 1948 story “The Mark Gable Foundation” when asked by a wealthy entrepreneur who believes that science has progressed too quickly, what he should do to retard this progress: “You could set up a foundation with an annual endowment of thirty million dollars. Research workers in need of funds could apply for grants, if they could make a convincing case. Have ten committees, each composed of twelve scientists, appointed to pass on these applications. Take the most active scientists out of the laboratory and make them members of these committees. ...First of all, the best scientists would be removed from their laboratories and kept busy on committees passing on applications for funds. Secondly the scientific workers in need of funds would concentrate on problems which were considered promising and were pretty certain to lead to publishable results. ...By going after the obvious, pretty soon science would dry out. Science would become something like a parlor game. ...There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashions would get grants. Those who wouldn’t would not.”
On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 6:39 AM, Daniel Hocking <[email protected]> wrote: > Calculating an impact factor from a larger database satisfies one of the > smallest problems with the impact factor. I think it's already been done for > the Scopus database for some journals. It is still a bit absurd to draw too > much inference based solely from the mean of a highly non-normal > distribution (usually looks like exponential decay with a few papers getting > many citations and most others having very few). There are many better > citation-based metrics of influence. I have a preprint available on the > subject comparing 11 metrics for 110 ecology journals: > https://peerj.com/preprints/43/ > > I'm still revising the paper and looking for an appropriate outlet, but as > the article suggests, I recommend using the Article Influence score in place > of the impact factor (still reporting in the JCR). The Eigenfactor can be > used to make other inferences, and the SJR and SNIP (calculated from Scopus) > can be used to compare among different fields of study, controlling somewhat > for differences in citation and publishing practices. > > Cheers, > Dan > > -- Malcolm L. McCallum Department of Environmental Studies University of Illinois at Springfield Managing Editor, Herpetological Conservation and Biology "Peer pressure is designed to contain anyone with a sense of drive" - Allan Nation 1880's: "There's lots of good fish in the sea" W.S. Gilbert 1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution. 2000: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction MAY help restore populations. 2022: Soylent Green is People! The Seven Blunders of the World (Mohandas Gandhi) Wealth w/o work Pleasure w/o conscience Knowledge w/o character Commerce w/o morality Science w/o humanity Worship w/o sacrifice Politics w/o principle Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.
