Questioning the Impact of the Impact Factor. A Brief Review and Future Directions

To provide a brief review of literature on the journal impact factors (JIF) and the newer research metrics being proposed or implemented.

The authors performed a PubMed search of articles published in the English language on the journal impact factors. Data captured include historical perspectives, evolution, calculation, criticisms of JIF and their rebuttals, and organized efforts to address JIF issues, alternate research metrics, and future directions. Specific emphasis was laid on evaluating the criticisms, current lacunae, and the changing practice patterns.

One of the measures to assess the research impact of an article is the number of citations it receives. Hence, citation-based metrics are commonly used for such purposes. While editors and well-known scholars refrain from attributing article success to the journal's prominence, the same is not true for most authors. JIF is still one of the top factors when deciding on an article submission. JIF is today an acceptable objective and quantifiable measure of knowledge dissemination. However, JIF should not be used as a surrogate measure to assess an individual researcher or an individual article. The reverence to JIF in this regard needs to be questioned. While alternate metrics or altmetrics have their advantages and limitations, they nevertheless augur well an era where scientometrics are complementary to one another without undue reliance on a sole parameter.

While there is no need to demonize the JIF, its role in the scholarly assessment should be scaled down. The over-reliance and undue hype surrounding it should be discouraged at multiple scientific levels.