In a world where metrics seem to be used all the time do we ever consider their validity? In some subjects with few journals the impact factors are high by default whereas in other subjects the impact factors can be abnormally low simply because of the large numbers of publications. What ever happens to the excellent paper in the low impact journals? This is an observation from looking at the literature. Sometimes it is better to judge a paper by its content rather than from its impact factor which can be, not necessarily of course, totally misleading. Does anyone agree or am I way out here?
Well, I totally agree with you, you can not compare anything with others. Absolutally hard and wrong. To minimize any variations even between people, compare man and woman, young and adult, and so on are statistically hard. Even within the same field of science, you can not compare e.g., statistic and chemistry or physiology and so on. The comparison to be correct should be under the same conditions in everything except the factor looking for.
It;s good to see. I simply wondered when we go to such lengths to ensure quality in publications we use arbitrary units of measurements. Simply bad science.
It is *always* bettter to judge papers by the contents rahter than by the impact factor. The latter only measures the ability of researchers to pass the journal's gatekeepers (editors and peer review).
I agree with the general gist of the discussion here. Another point to add is that "impact" evolves over time. On the whole, any such measure is really just a social thing, a very arbitrary and irrelevant notion to the goals of science. How would you really measure the "impact" of the background work laid over the years for Einstein's well-known papers if he didn't cite them all (which he obviously could not)?
Still...I check my various "impact" measures like google scholar and RG all the time! :)
Many thanks again. It is good to see, As scientists we should be careful about using arbitrary metrics. Building on sand and all that....!
Another thing that has always bothered me- what happened to all the brilliant ideas that were turned down by funding bodies ? If you have any great funding applications that were turned down and later became revolutionary discoveries in their own right it would be able to create a database just for the fun of it..
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