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What do the scientists think about the impact factor?

Author

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  • Gualberto Buela-Casal

    (Universidad de Granada)

  • Izabela Zych

    (Universidad de Córdoba)

Abstract

The impact factor is a highly polemic metric. It was designed to help scientists in searching for bibliographic references for their own works, enabling communication among researchers and helping librarians in deciding which journal they should purchase. Nevertheless, it has soon become the most important measure of scientific performance applied to journals, articles, scientists, universities, etc. Since then, some researchers argue that it is a useless and flawed measure, while others defend its utility. The current study is the first survey on the opinion on the topic of a broad sample of scientists from all over the world. The questionnaire was answered by 1,704 researchers from 86 different countries, all the continents and all the UNESCO major fields of knowledge. The results show that the opinion is slightly above the median which could be understood as “neither positive nor negative”. Surprisingly, there is a negative correlation between the number of articles published by the respondents and their opinion on the impact factor.

Suggested Citation

  • Gualberto Buela-Casal & Izabela Zych, 2012. "What do the scientists think about the impact factor?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 281-292, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:92:y:2012:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0676-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-012-0676-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Lidia González & Juan Miguel Campanario, 2007. "Structure of the impact factor of journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index: Citations from documents labeled “editorial material”," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(2), pages 252-262, January.
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    7. Gualberto Buela-Casal & Izabela Zych & Ana Medina & María I. Viedma Del Jesus & Susana Lozano & Gloria Torres, 2009. "Analysis of the influence of the two types of the journal articles; theoretical and empirical on the impact factor of a journal," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(1), pages 265-282, July.
    8. James Hartley, 2012. "To cite or not to cite: author self-citations and the impact factor," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 313-317, August.
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    10. Jerome K. Vanclay, 2012. "Impact factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 211-238, August.
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