Shared by @silverton
"These days - sad to say - the 'impact factor' of your work (that is, the amount of times it gets cited and how quickly said research takes to win citations) is seen as an important measure of how 'good' your science is. I think we can question the notion that 'impact factor culture' [qualitatively] helps our science." - Darren Naish
Those of us who publish technical research papers like to see our work cited by our colleagues. Indeed, it's integral to one's success as a researcher (whatever 'success' means) that others cite your work, in whatever context. You might not like to see the publication of a stinging attack that demolishes your cherished hypothesis and shows how your approach and data analysis (and maybe overall philosophy, intellect and ability to write) are flawed, but the fact is that someone has at least read, and is citing, your work... and that's still a sort of success. These days - sad to say - the 'impact factor' of your work (that is, the amount of times it gets cited and how quickly said research takes to win citations) is seen as an important measure of how 'good' your science is. Speaking as someone who works in a field where century-old monographs are still among the most-cited and most important works, where the accruing of tiny bits of data can sometimes (years later) enable someone to piece together evidence for a high-impact gee-whiz bit of science, and where 'high-impact' papers are all but useless and frequently contain hardly any information, I think we can question the notion that 'impact factor culture' helps our science... However, I'll avoid that can of worms for the time being. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... [extracted from The pain of not getting cited: oversight, laziness, or malice? [Tetrapod Zoology] via feedly]
