Movement says ‘no’ to reliance on impact factors

European scientific societies, journals and scientists have joined an international movement to put an end to excessive reliance on journal impact factors, which count the average number of citations a journal’s articles receive, in assessing researchers and institutions.

Scientists, funders, scientific societies and journal editors have signed a statement, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, which makes 18 recommendations for changes that would reduce the dependence on journal impact factors in scientific evaluation. Specific recommendations are directed at publishers, institutions, researchers, funders and the organisations that calculate impact factors.

The declaration says that although journal impact factors are often used to evaluate scientific output, the metric “was originally created as a tool to help librarians identify journals to purchase, not as a measure of the scientific quality of research in an article. With that in mind, it is critical to understand that the Journal Impact Factor has a number of well-documented deficiencies as a tool for research assessment.”