Impact factor and other indices to assess science, scientists and scientific journals

This paper traces the evolution of measures and parameters for the evaluation of science and scientific journals from the first attempts during the early part of the last century to the development of the most popular, current and widely used metrics viz., citations, impact factor (IF) etc. The identification of measures of evaluation in science and scientific reporting paralled the post-war increase in funding in the United States of America. Biomedical and medical sciences continue to garner a major share, estimated to be almost two-thirds of total research and development funding of over US$ 350 billion. There has been a concomitant growth in the publications in learned journals. About 1.4 million papers are published every year in an estimated 20,000 journals. In India there are an estimated 100 journals in medical sciences. With a steady increase of about 10% every year, the competition for grants, awards, rewards etc., is fierce. This unrelenting increase in number of scientists and the resultant competition, the limitation of peer review was felt. A search was on for new quantifiable measures for informed decision making for funding, awards, rewards, etc. Now virtually all major decisions all over the world are based on some data linked to publications and/or citations. The concept of citations as tool for 'evaluating' science was first proposed by Eugene Garfield in 1955. The availability of Science Citation Index (SCI), Journal Citation Reports (JCR), Web of Science etc. and the relative ease with which they could be used (and abused) has spawned an entirely new area bibliometrics/scientometrics. As only a limited number of journals could be included in the Thomson Reuters (TR) databases (currently numbering about 10500), analyses based on such a limited dataset (also selected in a non-transparent way by the TR) has been widely and severely criticized by both the developed and developing countries. Yet, studies have shown that citation-based data and indicators (warts and all) could still be put to productive use for purposes of evaluation (as scientists just love numbers). There were simultaneous efforts to find alternative indicators using the TR databases, and through other innovative methods. Some of these include Google Scholar, PageRank, H-index, Y-factor, Faculty of 1000, Eigen Factor etc. The advantages and limitations of these indices are discussed. There is a need for a more critical look at these parameters from the Indian perspective to compute/ device/adapt these measures to suit our needs. There are 205 journals under the category Physiology and 201 in the Pharmacology category listed in the JCR. There are four major Indian journals under the category of Physiology and Pharmacology and none of them are listed in the TR databases reflecting the limitation of these databases. Eventually, and in the long run, the quality of our journals needs to be improved as the current era of globalization and web-access provides both a challenge and an oppportunity for the science and scientific journals published from India to get increased global visibility.