The tyranny of the impact factor: why do we still want to be subjugated?

Abstract

A collective obsession with the Impact Factor (IF) has led to major changes in political science in many countries, and in recent years, these changes have been especially visible in Brazil. Despite critiques of both this measure's ability to evaluate the scientific publications and its spread in the evaluation of researchers and institutions, Brazil has taken the IF as an important element in evaluating Brazilian graduate programs. In this article, we briefly try to demonstrate that the IF can be subject to many biases that seem to be completely ignored or unknown.

The current status of ethnobiological research in Latin America: gaps and perspectives

“…Many factors may influence the number of citations these papers receive. The number of authors, names, gender, language, and interdisciplinary collaboration are some examples [ 17 ]. According to Abt [ 18 ], the duration of the research and the area of knowledge may also influence the number of citations received by scientific studies.…”

Comunicação e Ciência: iniciação à ciência, redação científica e oratória científica

“…Dependendo do parecer, poderíamos rejeitar ou aceitar a hipótese inicial. Todavia, como cientistas, devemos admitir que muitas variáveis podem interferir em um determinado parecer: conflito de interesses por parte do revisor, problemas e intrigas pessoais, revisores não qualificados, ideias preconcebidas sobre os autores ou tema da investigação (ver Albuquerque, 2010). Nesse sentido, a nossa decisão pode ser influenciada com base nesses pareceres.…”