Impact Factor: the Journal Competition, Scientific Excellence or Fool’s Game in Publishing Industry?

Abstract

Abstract In today’s world of competition for economic survival, it is not easy to give a convincing answer to the question in the title of this communication. As authors, researchers, academicians, leaders of research programmes and scholars, we cannot afford to ignore the subject of impact Factor because it is directly and indirectly affecting our livelihoods at all levels in the society, as decisions are now being made based on them to evaluate our performances and that of companies, departments and institutions. A lot about Impact Factors has been discussed in many spheres of human life and of course, everybody is right in his/her arguments. What best defines us as what we are as individual authors, researchers, academicians and scholars should be prioritized beyond the commercial elegance being attached. A careful and serious consideration need to be taken in order to avoid jeopardizing productive and developmental research. Having known the malpractices of Editors - in - Chief to attain a high Impact Factors for their respective journals, is it worthwhile therefore, maintaining the Impact Factor as a proxy measure of quality of research and academia in the society? Considering the origin and evolution of Impact Factor as an index metric measure for research journals and human malpractice nature, it is not prudent therefore for Impact Factor to be used to assess the quality and capability of individual authors, researchers, academicians, research programmes and scholars as well as institutions and/or companies. Keywords: Citation analysis; Science Citation Index; Journals; Publishing industry; Research and academia Abbreviations: IF: Impact factor; JIF: Journal Impact Factor; JCR: Journal Citation Reports; SCI: Science Citation Index; ISI: Institute for Scientific Information; CIA: Citation Indexing and Analysis; ICSU: International Council for Science; DORA: Declaration on Research Assessment