Not-So-Deep Impact

Nature, 23 Jun 2005 Every year at the end of June, scientific publishers' eyes turn to Philadelphia, where the Institute for Scientific Information releases a snippet of data that they crave: the impact factor of each journal. In due course, bureaucrats in research agencies will roll the impact figures into their performance indicators, and those scientists who worry about such things will quietly note which journal's number wins them the most brownie points. Attempts to quantify the quality of science are always fraught with difficulty, and the journal impact factors are among the few numbers to persist. The result is an overemphasis of what is really a limited metric. Read more