Should consider scientific impact.

Seems like impact, by itself, is too subjective a notion and opens things up for clever marketing twists and the politics of soundbites rather than true objective scientific impact, which is based upon how much other scientists may build upon the work

Yes, you should. But the problem is that young scholars often do not have the leisure to publish wherever the best place is in terms of scholarly impact. My most influential article, for example has been cited several hundred times. Initially, I tried to get it published as a book chapter in a handbook, but it was rejected by the editor as too cutting edge at the time. Luckily, however, it was accepted in the top public relations journal a few months later. Had it been published in the Handbook it would never have been cited more than a few times (as all the other chapters in the handbook have been).

The same is true of high impact ranking journals. Just because a journal has a high impact, does not mean anyone who reads it will want to cite your work. One of my best articles (in my opinion) was accepted without revision into what was considered the best Communication journal at the time for such work (Critical Studies in Mass Communication) -- before Google Scholar, and ISI rankings came along. Unfortunately, no one in my field, public relations, reads CSMC, so my article has only been cited a few dozen times. Had I placed it in Public Relations Review, it would have been cited a lot more.

But this begs the question. Many academics do not care if an article is good or bad, or whether it is cited often or not, only whether the journal has an ISI ranking of greater than 1. My journalism colleagues would rather see an article published in one of the AEJMC journals and never cited, then put into a journal in say Management and cited 1,000 times. For them, a "longer article" in what they consider a good journal is better than a well cited article, even if the long article never gets used by anyone.

I believe that you should try to strike a balance. Place your work in the "most appropriate" and "best" (highest ranked) journal that you can. Unless your school has specific rules telling you what journals to publish in, I believe that placing your work into the best journal in your specific field should be the goal.

Hope this helps.

MLK