I received a curious piece of spam this morning from something called "Index Copernicus" (IC) and though it did not promise to increase the size of a bodily organ it suggested that it might inflate one's ego somewhat. One of the services that it offered is to provide the calculation of a "Personal Impact Factor" (PIF) (comparable to ISI's Journal Impact Factor) and something called the Hirsh Index (don't know anything about that). Apparently, I was being offered the services because "you have reached a level of professional recognition and awareness".
Perhaps the IC has been reading TiPS? Anyway, I was curious about what a PIF was and whether anyone actually used such a thing. So, like any other ordinary human being, I did a google search for "personal impact factor" and found a fairly good number of websites mentioning it (though, perhaps, to various degrees of seriousness or appropriateness). One hit caught my eye because it came from the Mt. Sinai Medical School (a medical school/hospital that NYU Medical entered into some kind of relationship several years ago). The link below goes to a webpage at Mt. Sinai's library website which apparently was set-up because some dean at Mt Sinai wanted its faculty to calculate their own PIF. See: http://www.mssm.edu/library/reference/impactfactors.shtml Personally, I found the webpage somewhat hilarious but it may help one to understand why researchers, especially in medical science, might be a little crazy in getting out publications, as many as possible in a short a period of time, perhaps of dubious quality and questionable ethics (e.g., plagiarism). I admit that I would be somewhat embarassed to calculate my PIF for the timeframe specified on the Mt. Sinai website because I've slacked off in publications in the last few years (perhaps I've been spending too much time on TiPS?). However, my lifetime PIF, based on all publications and citations in ISI Web of Knowledge, is somewhat reassuring and allows me to justify having a moderate degree of self-esteem. ;-) For folks with access to ISI Web of Knowledge it might be an interesting (though possibly depressing) experience to try to figure out what one's PIF is. I hope to God that no one on this list actually has had to calculate this or soemthing like this in order to justify their continued employment. I'm familiar with environments where a person's worth is only as good as their last (major) publication and they can be truly insane places. -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
