Abandoning Journal Impact Factors? Why and why not

• From Science Insider 16/5/2013   More than 150 prominent scientists and 75 scientific groups from around the world today took a stand against using impact factors, a measure of how often a journal is cited, to gauge the quality of an individual's work. They say researchers should be judged by the content of their papers, not where the studies are published.

MORE ON THIS TOPIC:

• From e!Science News:  Scientific insurgents say 'Journal Impact Factors' distort science
• From the Chronicle of HE 16/05/2013 -    Researchers and Scientific Groups Make New Push Against Impact Factors

• San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment There is a pressing need to improve the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated by funding agencies, academic institutions, and other parties. To address this issue, a group of editors and publishers of scholarly journals met during the Annual Meeting of The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in San Francisco, CA, on December 16, 2012. The group developed a set of recommendations, referred to as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. 

AND SOME OLDER ARTICLES

• Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research.  BMJ. 1997 February 15; 314(7079): 498–502. 

• Scientometrics 2012, 92(1) : Special Discussion Issue on Journal Impact Factors

• Impact factor: imperfect but not yet replacable  
• The demise of the Impact Factor: The strength of the relationship between citation rates and IF is down to levels last seen 40 years ago