The unintended impact of impact factors
Dr. Mickey Marks of UPenn stopped by PSPG yesterday to discuss the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) which calls for new metrics to determine the value of scientific contributions. The system in question is the Thomson Reuters’ Impact Factor (IF) which was developed in the 1970s to help libraries decide which journals to curate. Since then IF has taken on an inflated level of importance that can even influence promotional and hiring decisions. But can a single number really summarize the value of a scientific publication? IF is calculated by dividing the average number of citations by the number of citable articles a journal has published over the last two years. One reason Dr. Marks became involved in DORA is because he is co-editor at a journal whose IF had been steadily dropping over the last few years, a trend experienced by numerous other cell biology journals. This led many in the field to question whether IF was really accurate and useful. As y...