Why the Impact Factor of Journals Should Not Be Used for Evaluating Research¶

Seglen, P. O. (1997). Why the Impact Factor of Journals Should Not Be Used for Evaluating Research. BMJ, 314(7079), 498-502.

Type: Journal article
Intellectual base: Primary research
Year: 1997
Volume: 314
Issue: 7079
Pages: 498-502
DOI: 10.1136/bmj.314.7079.498
DOI registrant: BMJ
Link: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.314.7079.497
Cited from: library_information_science, philosophy

Cited by¶

2 citations across 2 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes¶

Relevance Substitution
- in recommender systems (engagement signal substituted for user-value signal), in scientific evaluation (citation count and author-prestige substituted for research quality),
  This sourceArgues citation and journal-impact metrics are poor and substituted proxies for research quality.
Salience-as-Significance
- Science and academia. Citation counts and venue prestige read as intellectual quality, when they measure use frequency shaped by field size, recency, and conformity.
  This sourceArgues citation counts and venue prestige measure use frequency shaped by field size, recency, and conformity rather than intrinsic quality.

Verification¶

Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.

Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 2 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.

Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.

See how references were verified.

Links previously used in the corpus¶

Before the registry existed this work was also linked 1 other way.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.314.7079.498 ×1

Registry ID ref:7d48f28f11bd · see in the full table