Impact Factors
Tommy Boone, PhD, MPH, FASEP, EPC
Professor and Chair
Department of Exercise Physiology
The College of St. Scholastica
Duluth, MN 55811
In January 2004, I published an article [1] entitled, “Journal Impact Factor: A Critical Review” in the PEPonline journal. The article began with the following paragraph: “It is widely recognized that “impact factors” are used to rank and, therefore, identify the so-called best journal to publish one’s work. This is true today even though most researchers really don’t understand that the Science Citation Index (SCI) is frequently misunderstood, if not used indiscriminately. After a careful examination of the cumulative impact data, it is clear that the quantitative influence reflects more than the assumed quality of the journal.”
Later, in the article [1], I pointed out that the “…article is a snapshot of the impact factor problem as it is presently used. Researchers (not librarians, information scientists, publishing houses or companies, to mention a few) ought to be the primary players in deciding the actual value of the quality of their research. The problem is that only a few researchers, exercise physiologists included, seem to understand that research, as is presently understood, is held captive in thinking that is decades old.” At the time, I was not aware of Martin Frank’s 2002 comments published in The Physiologist. I am gratified to know that others, although few in number, have the same feelings about impact factors. And, yet I am, admittedly, on occasion in absolute bewilderment why educated people are often the last in line of commonsense!
Frank [2] pointed out in his piece, as I did, that relying on impact factors of 5 or greater to judge whether a faculty member deserves to get tenure makes no sense at all. Frank’s [2] actual words are, “I was offended by the effort of the chair to attempt to correlate the impact factor of the journal with the impact, or excellence, of the faculty member’s research.” As I had pointed in 2004, he knew that the impact factor was not a measure of scientific quality. It is an old “numerology” system that is misused and misconstrued. Exercise physiologists should make a clean break from the use of impact factors [1], particularly given the digital age of electronic publications.
The bottom line is that the impact factor cannot and should not be used as a measure of the quality of either a journal article or the author(s). Or, perhaps, equally as well or even better said by Frank [1], “don’t judge an author by the journal’s impact factor!”
References
- Boone, T. (2004). Journal Impact Factors: A Critical Review. Professionalization of Exercise Physiologyonline. 7:1 [Online]. http://faculty.css.edu/tboone2/asep/journalIMPACTfactor.html
- Frank, M. (2002). A Matter of Opinion. The Physiologist. 45:4:181.