“3 . . 2 . . 1 . . Impact [Factor]: Target [Academic Career] Destroyed!”

Abstract

"Publish or perish" is the time-honored "principle" for academicians who race to accumulate lines under the "publications" section of a curriculum vitae. The original intent of publication-to inform others of findings and further scientific knowledge-has been corrupted by factors including (1) exponential growth of journals and the journal industry, fueled in part by intrusion of the Internet into all aspects of academic life; and (2) adoption of journal metrics (rather than written content) as the measure of scientific quality. The proprietary Thomson Reuters Impact Factor is the most pernicious metric, having caused editors and publishers to change editorial practices to boost the number. At the same time, gullible administrators and government agencies have been persuaded that metrics for the journal in which materials are published can be used as a measure of the worth of individual investigators (and institutions) and their research efforts: simple numbers can be substituted for the burdensome effort required to read and assess research quality. Thus, granting of research funds, awarding of academic rank and tenure, and determination of salaries (including bonus payments) have become tied to manipulable journal metrics rather than the significance or quality of reported research. Therefore, it is no wonder that the integrity of science is more often being questioned. How should a young investigator approach the "publish or perish" dilemma? Performing sound research and preparing optimal materials for publication must remain the overriding goals: properly articulate the question addressed by the study; thoroughly document all methods and case information; carefully describe results including any conflicting or negative findings; discuss the importance of the findings along with how the results address the initial question and whether findings refute or confirm previous studies; prepare properly cited bibliographic references; list all author contributions, potential conflicts of interest, financial support, and required ethical approvals; and provide a catchy title and an abstract containing sufficient information that other investigators perusing scientific indices will be enticed to read the published article. Submit the completed manuscript to the most appropriate journal based on that journal's previously published content and relevance to the field of study regardless of journal metrics. On publication, notify investigators in the same field to ask for their comments on the work. Thus, an individual will become known for the quality of his or her work product and the worshiping of publication metrics will be unnecessary.

What is a kinesiology journal?1

“…Numerous scholars and editors have pointed out the biases and limitations of biblometrics like the impact factor to evaluate journals (e.g., MacRoberts & MacRoberts, 1989 ;Opthof, 1997 ;Seglen, 1997 ;Phelan, 1999 ;Kurmis, 2003 ;Cameron, 2005 ;Garfi eld, 2006 ;Adler & Harzing, 2009 ;Vanclay, 2009 ;Brumback, 2012 ). It is also well known that the highly skewed nature of citations to articles in journals makes a journal's impact factor virtually unrelated to the citations of individual articles in that journal ( Seglen, 1997 ;Starbuck, 2005 ;Garfi eld, 2006 ).…”

“…Alberts (2013) argues that leaders in science need to accept responsibility for making substantive evaluations of individual scientifi c contributions and not rely on journal editors and impact factors of journals. Alberts (2013) and others ( Adler & Harzing, 2009 ;Brumback, 2012 ;Brembs, Button, & Munafo, 2013 ) have nicely summarized how the misuse of bibliometric variables harms science and individual scholars being evaluated using these metrics rather than the merit of their work. Cardinal, et al .…”

"Going green": self-archiving as a means for dissemination of research output in ecology and evolution

“…This database contains details of the journals' impact factors and a range of other bibliometrics. Whether one agrees with this measure of prestige, and some certainly do not (Brumback 2012), it is indisputable that impact factors are the primary heuristic tool in judging the quality of research output. As well as extracting data on the impact factors of each of these journals, I also searched the SHERPA RoMEO database, which summarises the approach taken to selfarchiving manuscripts for over 18,000 academic journals.…”

Editorial: a Very Special Issue

“…This latter criteria is a bit cynically pragmatic, but nonetheless important in the current academic environment. Journal metrics such as impact factor and other purported performance measures are well known to be unreliable, invalid and can be just plain wrong (Brumback, 2012;EyreWalker & Stoletzki, 2013;Hantula, 2005), however they still exert an inordinate influence over gullible administrators and the potential authors who have to answer to them. Too many institutions and funding agencies use journal metrics as the primary or sole indicator of scholarly Bperformance^Bproductivity^or Bquality.^It does a great disservice to early or mid-career scholars if their work appears in a journal with low metrics.…”