© BRYAN SATALINO
Eugene Garfield’s pioneering work on the journal impact factor (IF) fundamentally changed how institutions evaluate scientific quality. What was initially sought to help make decisions about journal subscriptions today influences academia far beyond the stocking of libraries. Scientists may receive grants, bonuses, and tenure depending on the perceived impact of the journals in which they publish their research. This practice has been widely criticized because the IF is a poor indicator for the number of citations of a specific journal article, and motivating scientists based on citation rates and journal IFs might have unwanted side effects, potentially jeopardizing the reliability and credibility of science.
Using IFs for such purposes also results in reasoning and argumentation fallacies. Policies that rely on journal-based metrics for evaluating scientific ...
