Impact factor is only useful for administrators and journal publishers who want to charge over the odds for publishing other people's work. It should have no place in the evaluation of science and scientists.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals

I believe that IF is a valuable indicator, but not an absolute one. It is only useful for comparing journals in the same research area, and I think (I hope !) that most scientists are aware of this. For example, as you mentioned, journal of mechanics or mathematics have a much lower average IF than those of biology or medecine. But this does not mean that one research area has a lower quality than the other ! Of course, if you are trying to publish a multidisciplinary work, better trying the chose and "orientate" your paper for making it accepted in the topic having the highest IF. As a last example, studies of the mechanical properties of a given material will have more chance to have higher IF (therefore more citations) if published in a journal of materials science than in a journal of pure mechanics.

Alain

My opinion is that IF is one of the greatest and MOST DANGEROUS scurilities influencing the scienece in the last years. It has not been invented to evaluate the quality of scientific work. Its aim was to show to bad financed libraries what journals are to be ordered.

I am deeply confinced that also the mode of calculation is wrong and does not respect the speed of information circulation in individual sciences and, before all, it does not respect that there are disciplines, in which an information become really quickly outmoded, while in others an old (in case of necessity verified) information is of enormous value, especially in environmental sciences.

IF also does not respect narrow specialization of some researches, who are automaticaly handicaped. IF inhibits founding and developing of new journals handicaping authors who would like to publish in them to start them. it also affect the freedom and diversity of research because it forces the people to "swim" in the s.c. main stream. In fact I suspect IF to create an monopol for somebody and to elimiinated some disciplines.

I strongly support different kinds of media like Research gate or Academic repository, because the help to re-make science free and democratic.

I would also like to draw attention to the editorials in Current contentst in mid-1980-s, where realy wise opinions about citation rate etc. were presented. At that time it was a great help for researcher. At present the negative effects already predominate.

The science and culkture are extremely diversified and multidimensional. Therefore they can not be evaluated by a one dimensional numeric scale. There are compared uncomparable items. They serve just to the "bureaucrats" and "managers" with limited horizons and trained in judging a leage of ice hockey or fotball.

I fully agree with Mr. Ferrarini.

I also think that the present fascination by some quantitative measures of quality of scientific work is influenced by the neo-liberal economism, which does not distinguish between a routine "money prodicing " work and a creative work with no or very remote economiv profite for a bussinesman or corporation. Science is not a factory.

Also the Hirsch´s index says little about the quality of work. It is just a simple measure of equitability of citing rate. An epochal discovery published in one paper can lead to a very low hirsch index, because other papers are little cited. In contrast, a person prodicing many + - routine papers in a main-stream discipline can seem to be "genial" according h-indec

It is very nice that many scientists know the negatives of such measures, but they have too limited possibilities to explain it to those, who are "managing" the science policy.

Impact factor is only useful for administrators and journal publishers who want to charge over the odds for publishing other people's work. It should have no place in the evaluation of science and scientists.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals

If as scientists we are obliged to respect proper methodology in our fields, so why we do not totally criticise this false tools prepared for some interests of top publishers and bibliometric institutes to keep their monopoly, and dictate conditions for others. How many Nobel price winners should confirm to us what is seen by all community. I agree with Zbysek Sustek, this bibliometrical fascination in last decades is not good for science. Science is not a fashion parade. According me the wave of criticism of these measures is too weak and it encourages different decision makers in science to transfer it to personal evaluating systems. Maybe boycott is really good solution? If rationale argumentation fails.

Hi,

Surely, impact factor and citations (H index) are usually adequate (but not for all purposes: see the article through this link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3345343/) but are not the only measures (tools) available to evaluate a scientist, so several other criteria should also be considered for this issue, including:

- Future long-term impact of published articles of this scientist on his field of study

- Quality of research studies performed by students/post-doc researchers who were previously supervised by the scientist we are evaluating

- Number of international research projects coordinated by this scientist

- Number of foreign co-authors (who are not from the same country of the scientist) mentioned in the articles he published.

- Number of articles (mainly in journals belonging to Thomson Reuters) that were reviewed by this scientist

- Frequency of his membership in editorial board of international journals

- Number of international scientific awards received by the scientist

Cheers

Metrics such as IFand citation rates are especially poor measures of scientific impact in applied sciences, precisely because they fail to account for the extent of application of the science. As an example, a plant physiologist colleague developed, through a neat series of controlled experiments, an forestry herbicide prescription that maximized effectiveness while minimizing cost and impacts to non-target species. The series of papers from that work was published in very applied, narrowly-focused journals (i.e., low impact), and were cited only moderately (i.e, modest citation rates). However, that body of work greatly influenced how forests are managed, particularly with regard to control of invasives, across multiple continents - which to me indicates a tremendous real-world impact that isn't even hinted at by the currently popular valuation metrics.

I think that for each field must be different methodology for the calculation IF and citation Index, which finally could equalize and standardize fields with low interest, with the fields with higher interest. Thus statistical program makers, must work with different field professionals to make separate programs. At least can be created index list for fields, which later could be multiplied on IF and Citation Index and we get equal result to compare different fields and field scientists.

For sure IF is not enough and the way it is used must certainly be improved, as most of you noticed. Fortunetely, at least in France, scientists are evaluated based on many other criteria, among them those partly listed by Ramzi. But the metrics presently used remain an important part of the evaluation. So this is how the system works, whether we like it or not. This is just like paying taxes, you can complain but nothing more. Therefore, as we have to play the game, better playing it with the rules, which are the same for all, this is what I was meaning.

Alain

Totally agree with you, IF number does not mean everything, to judge a scientist by the IF or citation is not fair.

In my opinion, to value a scientist, we just need to compare the publication in his own field, no matter how the IF or citation numbers are, as long as it has influnce in this field, he is a good scientist.

Dear All,

RG is full with discussions on quality assessment of scientists and pseudo-scientists. I think perfect assessment option does not exist because the best and mostly objective method can be influenced by particular interests and will be distorted when becomes institutionalized and it must suit too much personnel and other interests.

Only the evaluation of the future may be correct if one is able to survive and his performance has not been lost.

All scientific publications regularly recorded must receive an IP. It is not acceptable that some scientific journals, published by Museums and Universities, wich exist over one or two centuries, have an IP = 0.

Try to register Albert Einstein and evaluate on the basis of the journals were he published his works and you will discover that his IP is little more than zero.

The Impact Factor and number of citation do not value a scientist. Such metrics should be used only for beginner scientists as a measure in graduate school to show if a PhD Candidate gain more experience and learn how to do research or experiment and if he is doing a progress, etc.

You can easy imagine an author who did something wrong and because of that later he was cited as a "bad example" may get very high citation - which he/she can take as a good credit, but in fact he/she should not get even a single one. We should be valued for what we did in general, what problem we solved, what we discovered, described, what we added to the general knowledge, what is our area of expertise, etc. Obviously science administration wold like to get some metrics, but it should not be used to measure a value of scientist.

Dear Dr Paride Dioli

I completely agree with you. Let's say in the Entomology field there is Russian Journal `Entomological Review` (Entomologicheskoe Obozrenie), this journal publishes entomological and good quality papers almost more than 100 year. Unfortunately it has not IF. Thus, scientists regularly publishing in that journal has no citation index and RG et all. But does it mean that they are not good entomologists? of course not.

The same thing, I agree for George's comment!!! E.g., the "Bollettino della Società entomologica italiana" founded in 1870...and many Journals of the Italian Museums and Universities also if papers are written in english!! Taxonomy is the basilar study for biodiversity and applied entomology, but taxonomists generally have low IF because their journals have "NO economic interest"!!

Agree with Scott, Paride and George. I was surprised to find that the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, more than a century old and for long the most prestigious journal in South Asia, does not have a IF. Bernard's statement that "Impact factor is only useful for administrators and journal publishers who want to charge over the odds for publishing other people's work." resonates completely with my opinion! Old respected journals with no page charges for authors and low subscription charges usually have no IF.

I forget where I read it, but there was a very cogent post somewhere challenging the right of scientific publishers to charge to views articles in their journals, the argument being that the research was usually funded by public money, the researcher paid page charges, the journal got its money from subscriptions, so why the pay-per-view? This is clearly profiteering at public expense.

At the beginning of discussion we noted that to compare popular journals, because of high interests from politic, public, economic and other reasons, with the journals with narrower scope is not a fair. Let's think "Climate Change", newly founded journal has high IF. This is not because of this is very high quality (thought it can be), this is because of high interest on this field from different scientific societies. Now again it is not fair to say that "Entomologicheskoe Obozrenie" or other Taxonomic journals has not quality. I know very many very high quality taxonomists publishing in such journals and this does not mean at all that they are not good. This is what was said at the beginning by Shashan, Meshram (2014) and Lakhotia (2010) that we already got in young scientists "Impact Factor Syndrome". Therefore IF and CI with it's positive sides has negative sides too and is not universal.

Dr Leszek Bledzki is giving excellent example how bad scientists can get more credits and higher CI, than that of good scientist. Unfortunately.

I completly agree with the second contribution of G. Japoshvili. His example of the Russian Review of Entomology (=Entomologicheskoe obozrenie) is one of the best examples of inadequacy of IF and similar metrics. But not only this - it is an excelent example of the wrong and arbitrary policy of Current Contents, and now of WOS, to select to journals to be index .

Concretely - in early1980-s the journals were selected after the scheme that about one journal from a field and a country was chosen by CC to cover articles from as large number of countries as possible. From the former USSR the Zoological journal was selected, perhaps becouse covering the whole zoology, but Ent. oborz. not, perhaps because of focusing on insects.

Already in that time I asked, how it is possible that one of two absolutely equaly good journals - and both excelent - can be ignoretd. I know that in this huge country it was extremely difficult to publish a paper in any of them and the manuscripts were strictly reviewed.

And now an other example - intentionally less concrete. I have become member of editorial board of a museum journal in abroad. It was really a modest journal, but due to the enormous care of the museum and a rich support of the regional authorities its level increased admirably, quantitatively and qualitatively, during the last 10-12 years. The articles published in that journal slowly start to be cited the WOS. The ambition of the museum was to obtain the registration in current contents (WOS). The museum got the answer: Yes, you can immediately, just pay a tax...., a considerble amount of money... The offer was rejected and the editors contnue the hard work to obtain it later.

Hi,

in fact, It is generally assumed that “not all journals with Impact Factor are those publishing articles with higher scientific quality, and on the other hand, not all journals without Impact Factor are those publishing articles with lower scientific quality”. I strongly believe that a journal of both good scientific quality and reputation is that one providing fair, scientifically-sound peer review and publish articles that will certainly drastically influence the orientation of current and future studies of a given scientific area of interest. In Entomology-Ecology field of study for example there are some journals (either new or old ones) “without Impact Factor” that are by far, scientifically speaking, better than (and with more citations/year than) a number of other journals “with Impact Factor”. These journals include for example (but are not limited to) the following ones:

- Psyche: A journal of Entomology (UK)

- Bulletin de la Société Entomologique de France (France)

- Contributions to Entomology – Beiträge zur Entomologie (Germany)

- Journal of Entomological and Acarological Research (formerly: Bollettino di Zoologia Agraria et Bachicoltura) (Italy)

- Bollettino del Laboratoria di Entomologia Agraria “Filippo Silverstri” (Italy)

- Open Access Insect Physiology (Dovepress)

-International Journal of Insect Science (Libertas Academica)

- Entomological Review (Russia)

- Faunistic Entomology (Belgium)

- Ecologia Mediterranea (France)

- Acarologia (France)

etc…………

Cheers

Dear Levan, here is the example you asked for, the paper cited below by Vollenweider was published as an report with NO IF at all, and it is a very high quality paper and got one of the highest citation ever any paper got (it has one of the highest scientific influence on progress of science), so your general conclusion is not adequate. Usually journals with high IF publish high quality papers, but sometimes low IF or not at all IF publish very high quality and very influential papers, like this one:

Vollenweider, R. (1968). Scientific fundamentals of the eutrophication of’ lakes and flowing waters, with particular reference to nitrogen and phosphorus as factors in eutrophication. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Technical Report DAS/CS 1/68.27. 250 p.

You wrote that "there is no any taxonomic journal with high IF", but do you know why? - because there are not many taxonomist, and the production of the influential paper will take years of work. During this time ecologist may produce several doesn papers, highly cited, but after several years no one will ever remember them, but the taxonomic review or monograph, with low citation on the beginning will last for several decades because of high value of research and after years, the citation would be also higher. So we can not see the value of papers through the number of citation, but we should see it through its quality and value of science provided there.

How easy the basic rules have been forgotten. IF was initially constructed for bibliometric comparisons of journals. Nothing else... When 20 researchers publish their works to the same journal, they receive the same IF. Even if they publish letter to editors or book revue. How easy to notice it is not related with any evaluation of citations of papers or with their influence on scientific progress. Measure is the same for all. IF is intelligently constructed for keeping good position by publishers on the publisher's market. Of course, the process of IF rising for journals is based probably on algorithms reflecting citations, periodicity of publishing or something else. But what is value of these algorithms, if they are constructed with rejection of huge amount of journals from other countries because low value? not proper language? no marketable? competition? This is discrimination... And next, this discriminating system was transferred to evaluation of scientists using the same methodology. So, IF and citations are completely not adequate to value scientists and their discoveries. As I remember IF was implemented in 90-ties last century, when publishers started to transfer journals to the internet and try finding solution to "domesticate" this new medium. Living on the border between two centuries (XX and XXI), between two communication spheres (pre-internet and global village), and between two valorisation systems in science (pre- and IF-factoring), I am afraid, that after one decade, all actual active researchers will believe that their life cannot be significant without IF directed by IFI, without 20-30 publications per year located only in IF-ranked journals. Maybe someday, in short minutes of reflection, they discover that before of this crazy epoch science was also developed giving strong background for all actual research.

PS. If somebody is believing that actual IF of publications has influence on scientific progress, he should estimate it again after 20-30 years.

Andrzej has hit the nail on the head when he states " IF is intelligently constructed for keeping good position by publishers on the publisher's market." And, of course, dealing the less competitive journals staffed by scientists with no commercial savvy out of the game. Applying commercially successful marketing strategies to science, breeding a generation of IF and CI hungry researchers; pretending that western concerns are the only ones that are of importance on the globe.. and those works addressing them constitute 'important' science, and others do not.

Cosmetic companies depend on this sort of advertising and image build up, but it would be a pity if researchers with high intelligence get taken in by marketing strategies devised to convert their work into commercial success for publishers....

According to the Code, all taxa names published since 1758, shold be taken into account by all zoologists. If description of a new taxon is so bad, that does not allow to determine the taxon, other taxonomists have to discuss it, in order to axplain why they cannot use this taxon name; so they need to cite this bad publication. If the description of a new taxon is good, other researches are able use its name without citing the original publication.

And the second. We have started to play this game only now, and probably I do not understand something. But it seems, that if I have 10 new species and will prepare a good large paper with their descipton and comprehensive comparison, I will have 10 times less benifit, than if I will prepare 10 small papers, each with description of 1 species whithout comparison with others.

As scientists we all agree the IF and CI are no fair indicators to judge scientists. But... scientists are mostly judged by colleague scientist in commission that decide on funding. And what do they use? Yes... the IF (of the journals we publish in) and sometimes the CI.

In the discussion here above, it is clear that taxonomists feel discriminated by this system and they are right. I am a taxonomist myself, working on free-living flatworms (of all beasts !); perhaps 50 people are interested in that taxon. So when I have 10 citations it means I reached 20% of my public. When I would work on birds (not necessarily taxonomy), and I have 10 citations, that would mean around 1% of my potential public. The same applies on the IF of the journals: those accepting papers on flatworm taxonomy will undoubtedly generate a lower IF then those refusing taxonomy papers.

Ernest, so why is it that the same scientists who do not feel valued appropriately by such indicators then use the same indicators when sitting on panels and deciding about their co-workers ?

Not sure why... they may be "forced" by administrators the produce "objective" criteria and it is of course very tempting to use such SEEMINGLY objective criteria.

So maybe we should label this a temptation for one of the deathly sins for a scientist ... Instead don't go the easy way but find some more complex, as-objective-as-possible criteria .. If we scientists don't force administration while on these panels to leave the easy tempting way, then they will not do it by themselves ..

Several issues here, Susanne.

1. Finding "as-objective-as-possible criteria" is not an easy thing. I have a faint impression that RG is trying to do that, but, as with IF an IC and other "criteria", I am a bit suspicious that commercial interests may be behind RG.

2. Being retired, I am glad I do not have to worry anymore about funds. In the 40 years of my career, I have seen the influence of administration grow and I remember my professor complaining about it in the 60-ies. So who is forcing who?

But I would say: go for it Susanne, and all others who feel the same way!

so we will need a task force developing independent, as-objective-as-possible criteria to evaluate researchers. We won't get funding for that of course. Question is: am I the right candidate leading such a task force while I have not been able to acquire funding due to my low indicators, or should not rather someone established with great indicators to start with, take the leadership for that? Any volunteers out there?

Impact factor or any index of scientific productivity should probably be view at best a rough estimate of scientific talent. There are important talents which are overlooked by impact factor, including creativity, and things included in it that have little to do with scientific talent. I would never view any measure of productivity as a surrogate for creative talent, even in the sciences, and although impact is an attempt to get at the quality of one’s work, it is not focused on the creativity of one’s work. I keep mentioning creativity here because that is my own area of research. I realize there are other concerns with scientific talent.

Someone mentioned the “impact factor syndrome” and I can’t help but wonder if this is a reflection of a very general tendency towards objectivity, products, and productivity. This trend is obvious in creativity studies and creates a number of problems. It has taken us away from an understanding of creativity. I elaborated on this in several chapters, including “Creativity Need not be Social.”

When I said that productivity and citation impact reflect more than creative and scientific talent, I was thinking not just of the gamesmanship that facilitates publication, but also at serendipity and luck, as related to fame. Sometimes these are abstract or very general, as is the case when Zeitgeist is relevant. All I am really saying is that I would never take impact factor or productivity to be all that meaningful. Impact factor is just one source of information. I certainly wouldn’t use it if I were in a situation where I needed to hire a collaborator or even pick a PhD student and wanted someone with high creative potential. I wouldn’t mind hearing about that person’s publishing history and impact, but I would weigh other things at least as heavily in my decision.

I agree completely. I wish new faculty (and new Deans) understood that. I see a trend away from Academic Freedom and even tenure, and I have seen faculty hired in the past few years that are so young and educated in a climate where academic freedom and tenure are rarely mentioned. New faculty seem not to appreciate or expect either. None of these changes are good for scholarship.

All created our values are subjective and therefore have the big mistakes.

Only through a long period of time can to assess the contribution of the scientist in science.

Dear George

There is the objective of the researcher competence , signaled by the volume and importance of the work performed and the number of trained researchers , and subjective competence , signaled by the type of problems in which it is involved and the ability to newest solution .

Science is an activity that requires various qualities of the researcher : good deal of inventiveness , initiative, personal organization and ability to 'sell' their ideas . But the main quality - that goes for all professions - is pleased to work as a scientist .

To be a good scientist you must have a certain obsession with scientific challenge and the ability to deliver the work . Of course , creativity and supporting basic preparation are important , but also not neglect to maintain a general, including humanistic, because it enriches and makes the person more creative .

We can cite the interest , the curiosity , the spirit of research and effort in research and study as features of any researcher , Not to mention the ability to work with others and express themselves well , any necessary research. Already, an accurate observation , attention to detail and the ability to analyze , concentration and organization are more reserved for the scientific field skills .

Interdisciplinarity is in fact inseparable from the health area . Hence the need to have a broad , general knowledge, and, where possible, of the profound sciences, since the chemistry to psychology , to the extent that the causes of diseases are very different .

For this is also prerogative the ease of linking data. The amount of information coming from different areas have to be integrated and organized in directing research.

It takes initiative to develop their own public health projects , and coordination to group different interests in social interventions . The communication skills also matter accordingly .

The more people on the team are slower processes . Therefore , the momentum is paramount to research evolve. The social concern is essential.

It is not possible to evaluate a researcher only by impact factor and citations. These data are very small compared with the various steps in the scientific activity of the researcher. I believe we need more criteria to properly qualify , a scientist

Dear Nelson

Thank you for your answer. unfortunately it's hard to measure different characters of scientists, excluding IF and CI. And these measurable characters are not always fair.

Contribution to the society is the only parameter to evaluate scientist nothing else can give insight into the credibility of scientist.

Impact factor is nothing but intellectual family lineage and its has nothing to do with your creativity unless what ever you did gives something to others directly or indirectly.

Dear All,

Alessandro listed a lot of important qualities for a good scientist. I would add: to be honest, modest, right and cooperating.

I am afraid the virtues Alessandro listed do not work efficiently without honesty, modesty…

@Andras, I do agree with Your suggestions on qualities that a good scientist should possess !

I find this essay by M. J. Kumar very contributing to this thread! "Evaluating Scientists: Citations, Impact Factor, h-Index, Online Page Hits and What Else?" is available by following link!

http://mamidala.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/25/

The major problem with science citation indices (e.g. JIF, H) as a tool judging science quality is that they ignore underlying causes of citations.

Reasons of citations are often unidentified. Well-written papers containing scientific errors might often be cited, which indicates that citation rates do not necessarily reflect science quality. It also indicates that people often do not carefully read articles they cite. Alternatively, people citing a publication might refer to only one sentence in a publication perhaps implying they do not necessarily agree with all published messages presented.

Very difficult question indeed. I know colleagues that of self-citations and co- authorship have made ​​an art and ​a very good career. Some of them have been present in publications with 30 or 40 co-authors, and each of them is engaged in writing another article involving almost always the same people interchanging the first and the last place systematically. It is a real lobby for exchanging favors. In this way, some physicists in particular routinely publish data with almost 100 co-authors reaching stratospheric H index. Some of them, even, as associate editors or editors in chief of low ranking journals kindly but firmly suggest to the author of a submitted paper to insert some citations of their works. Are citations really reliable? How to value objectively a scientist? I am quite pessimistic in this matter. Impact factor depends on citations so....

Here is benchmarking approach to the researcher's evaluation.

Benchmarking with SciVal in Scholarly Communication and Research Services!

Benchmarking is the process of evaluating the performance of one entity in relation to other similar entities using standard measures. In the academic sphere, when we benchmark, we are evaluating an individual researcher’s or a group of researchers’ scholarly performance using bibliometric measures. 

 Bibliometric measures are traditionally citation-based, measuring the circulation of an idea through formal communication outlets — journals — by tracking how often, where, and by whom a work is referenced. Though anchored in print, citation-based metrics are an established and familiar way to determine how well a work is received within its discipline. These metrics can be applied at varying levels of granularity (article, author or publication venue) and measure different dimensions of scholarly performance (productivity, impact and collaboration)...

A broader basket of metrics

Of course, citation-based metrics are not the only metrics that can be used to measure scholarly performance. Where citations measure the circulation of an idea through formal publishing venues, web-based, article-level metrics, such as download counts and page views, social media mentions and media coverage (“altmetrics”) measure the penetration of an idea outside of formal channels and into the public sphere. (SciVal’s roadmap shows the addition of alternative metrics to the product throughout 2016 to complement the traditional citation indicators.) Taken together, citation-based and alternative metrics create a broad view of scholarly performance and present a comprehensive set of measures to use when benchmarking the scholarly performance of researchers.

https://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/articles/benchmarking-scival-scholarly-communication-and-research-services?utm_campaign=ELS_Library%20Connect%20Newsletter&utm_campaignPK=165517338&utm_term=OP19251&utm_content=200115377&utm_source=32&BID=613102223&utm_medium=email&SIS_ID=0

After longer time I looked again into our discussion, and see all is still cruising in the same magical circle (benchmarking, altmetrics, bibliometrics and so on). Actually I am spending a lot of time in finding in the net, and reading of these fantastic old books from passed centuries, which are deposed as scientific public domain. All most important backround for XX-XXI century science was gathered in books. Did you read some of them? Probably, you have not time... These books have'nt any IF, H and other metrics, they have not even ISBN. Do you think they are less valuable by this fact.  I am happy that they are public (unfortunately long time after death of their authors). In the same time a huge amounts of 1-5 page news each day are qualified as important input into science, and next  year we cannot find them among mountains of other news. Greatest of of them cannot be reached by community without "pay-per-view". How many of them will survive next few years? Maybe only these related with Nobel prize... Interesting that, in our bibliometrical dissussions - books are completely absent. Methodological error? According me, books' input into the community knowledge is several time higher, than particular journal announcements. As eventual authors of books, do you agree to be evaluated from only part of your activity, presented in journals? What is real value of researchers, when based only on part of their research? So, sorry for my lack of confidence for such methodologically neglected procedures. They try to position our research input then and now, immediately... It is impossible... Reading old books teach us that  our real input will be recognized long after passing to Eternity.  At that time any IF and number of citations will not be significant. 

 Dear Andrzej

Thank you for your interesting view. However I would like to define some questions little more exactly. What you mean under books (important books)? If you mean literature, then you are right, but if you mean study books in science I can't agree, as much as science is live organism, developing and progressing every year and old books are loosing their importance by the time. Let's think that someone is using 100 year Entomology book to teach Entomology at the University or etc. 

Everything is comparative, for instance, for me some 1-5 page scientific papers from XIX century still are very actual and important as much as they contain very important taxonomic notes for me and some times I am spending quite a lot time to find their originals. 

So to discuss some details we need to look in complex and we must define what we are talking about.

I agree that IF and Citation can't be only criteria to value scientist, other factors must be considered  too and each field needs it's specific methodology. There is no one unique methodology for each scientific field and we need more work to create it or we need to discuss it branch by branch. 

Yes, you are right. Because there is no one unique methodology for each scientific field, we have not need one unique methodology for measure scientific achievements at all. According me, bibliometry is not proper method for this, hovewer many of us like to have some more points then others...Bibliometry is related with some part of journals only, not with books (and not-topic journals) as other important sources of science. This is trick directed rather to our ego, not to real solution of quality problem. Progress in our civilisation development is not restricted to topic jornals. You probably know studies by Burke, how many fascinating directions were related with basic human discoveries. If we really need to evaluate all scientific sources, we should make one competent world organization (like UNO), and prepare proper system like this to protecting world peace... (sorry for sarcasm). But if we cannot do it, we cannot also agree with propositions and tendencies to monopolise evaluation of research using partial methodology, not adequate for whole science. About books... I think about books as more capacious and more ordered sources of knowledge, comparing to particular articles. To prepare important book in the field you have spent lot of time for studying problem, to compare and evaluate different theories, and finally to be ready to defend your own opinion in the matter. This is not the same, as preparing short note for journal with IF. Why this effort is not evaluated by bibliometric gurus? But I agree - time is not friendly for all our discoveries, both from books and articles, all is relative and changeable. If articles are stones building our road, the books are sign-posts, measuring distance. But road is never ending...By this reason we should have open eyes, where is horizon. Is it challenge in discovering truth about our world and space, or only challenge for money and simple prestige measured by number of citations.  Last American news from research about relationships between programmable "leming's race" and scale of falsification in science sound like caution. Is it still road of science?

And final conclusion: To know all old and new sources of knowledge is the duty for good researcher in his field. This is real measure of his quality.     

Pełnie zgadam się z panem Mamcarzem. I am fully agree with Mr. Mamcarz. The the monographs are even punishably underestimated or openly devaluated by the prersent "scientometric (pseudo)criteria", as well as citations of papers in the monographs, that are excluded from calculation of other modern scurility, colled "Hirsch´s index".

This fact results from the exagerated spreading of simplicist economic (perhaps more precisely  economicistic) thought that confudes the creative intelectual work with the routine work at a conveyer. It is just an obsedance of bureaucrats and people, who in fact parasitize on science.

There is not also made difference between sciences, for which publication of results in monographs or in few longer papaer (mostly all human and often also environmental sciences) is much more suitable then production of many short articles /some experimental sciences).

There is not taken in consideration the velocity of circulation of scientific information and durablity of their value.  In some sciences this velocity is high, but durability relatively short, whereas in other sciences (human and environmenta) even very old papúers have a great value for later comparisons or revisions. This is completely omited by IF, even if it is calculated not only for two, but, e.g. for five years.

I am fascinated by the fact that scietinsts, who mostly clearly see that the applied criteria are inadequate and openly say it in private or internet discussions, do not have enough courage to joint and to say it openly to the responsable or deciding authorities. But it is also a reflection of a slow but obvious spreading of fear in the society and of gradual transformation of deocracy to a form of corporate fascism.

In all, but especially the s.c. exact sciences, the sophistisez methods of comparison od results are elaborated, but in the s.c. "scientometrics" the plums are compared with pears.