Publishing will cost as much as the journal's impact.

In science, medicine, and economics especially, researchers are rated by their ability to publish in journals with a high impact factor. However, it takes some time before new journals, both traditional and open access, can acquire an impact factor. Only then are they of interest to researchers. Moreover, the impact factor has been under discussion in recent years and the VSNU wants to find a different way to reward and value scientists.

With time IF(impact factor) began to be inappropriately used as an indicator of a scientist’s performance. Recruitment, promotions, awarding of grants and determination of scientific calibre are all often judged using the same yardstick of IF. However, there are various flaws in IF that should be sufficient to discourage its use in academic evaluation.

IF(impact factor) doesn’t reflect the impact or citations of an individual article. Each article is described not in terms of its own statistics, but that of the journal. So, an article having fewer citations published in a high IF journal is given more importance than a highly cited article in a low IF journal.

While calculating IF(impact factor), self citations are also counted.

Review articles are generally highly cited. Publication of more number of review papers in a journal can greatly affect the journal’s IF.

IF depends on the size of the field concerned. A larger field size would draw more citations than the one having a small size.

As we can see the cons clearly outweigh the pros, but in spite of these flaws IF(impact factor) is still used largely for academic evaluation. This may be because it has been there for the longest time and also because no other more accurate tool is known. However, people are gradually becoming aware of the inappropriate use of IF and it is becoming more common among some scientists now that articles be judged on their merit and not on the basis of IF.

Publishing will cost as much as the journal's impact.

IF alone may not reflect article quality.

I agree with Remi Chukwudi Okeke

Dear Mr. Mkhelif!

You raised a critical issue. This problem is of importance especially in the era of COVID-19:

1) Elizabeth Redden (2020). "Rush to Publish Risks Undermining COVID-19 Research - COVID-19 research is being published at an astonishingly fast pace and taken up by the public quickly. That comes with problems." June 8 2020 Open Access, Copyright © 2020  •  Inside Higher Ed Available at:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/06/08/fast-pace-scientific-publishing-covid-comes-problems

2) Nature Index (2020). " COVID-19 research update: How many pandemic papers have been published? -A briefing on developments in coronavirus research publishing. Citation: " The pandemic may have accelerated the adoption of fast peer review, but a new preprint raises concerns that conflicts of interest are hindering fairness and transparency. ... Majority of early COVID-19 articles provide no new information on the disease" Open Access © 2020 Springer Nature Limited. Available at:

https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/how-coronavirus-is-changing-research-practices-and-publishing

May I claim that publishing criteria might become more often under investigation and considerations to change parameters for acceptable quality might be modified more often. In so one of the outcome might well be that publishing in high impact journals might become even more difficult. In addition as the environment might become more turbulent, the process of publishing might become more stressful and time-consuming. Yours sincerely, Bulcsu Szekely

Adnan Z. Mkhelif

I have published a few articles in high impact journals without any problems. if it is something new, innovative definitely it will be considered for publication.

Main difficulty is to come up with innovative solutions for improvement of existing research work, which is considered as your contribution. Also the solution should have universal implications i.e. should not be restricted to small datasets.

Following are some of the difficulties and disadvantages with high impact journals

(1) High rejection rate (70-85%)

(2) Does not disclose the exact reason for those articles rejected during preliminary screening. Authors receive standard rejection templates which give no room to improve the manuscript for subsequent submission to another journal.

(3) One needs to specifically reorient the research work to meet the present expectation.

(4) Expect articles which have the potential to receive more citations. A solid work on an old topic is usually rejected without mercy.

(5) Extremely hard to communicate to the editor to receive a response regarding any issue/query.

(6) Restrict multiple papers from authors but certain authors are entertained based on some factors including reputation or being a member of editorial board.

(7) A single negative comment may prompt rejection.

(8) Resubmission of a rejected manuscript after restructuring according to the rejected comments is not entertained.

Adnan Z. Mkhelif

Dear Researcher,

This is a very innovative question that you have asked.

Publishing in high impact journals involves strict reviewing and high financial consideration involved with it. That is a difficulty of publishing in these types of journals.

But I really cannot think of a disadvantage of the same. Possibly, you can say that when you publish in a high impact journal, your research is strongly visible and it may invite a lot of criticism. That may be a problem but I would prefer to not call it a problem.

So, to sum up, it can be said that publishing in a high impact journal may have some difficulties,, but no disadvantages as such.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Anamitra.

publishing in a high impact journal may have some difficulties.

Dear all

The publishing in high impact journals may have some difficulties, but no disadvantages as such.

Best regards,

Dear all;

Publishing in high impact journals involves strict reviewing and high financial consideration involved with it. That is a difficulty of publishing in these types of journals.

Best Regards