Impact factors can be a negative distraction from quality and science because they can be economic drivers for some scientific journals and researchers. Yet scientific impacts are often only realized over the long term so it is difficult to assess whether funding research is a great investment or not. I suspect impact factors are so compelling because they provide an immediate if flawed metric indicating that invested funding may payoff in some type of long-term benefits to society and the economy. If this is true, how can we do better in providing short-term metrics supporting the value of scientific research?
There are other measurements such as immediacy factor to address short-term situation of publications. However, I agree with the fact that impact factor has turned to an economic indicator rather than pure reflection of scientific value of publications.
Yes the immediacy factor does indicate short term impact for different journals. Possibly we have too many metrics for these things already. But given the great value of science but the problem of showing this value on the short term, some further work on metrics may help.
Journals use indicators such as 'number of downloads' or 'most viewed' to show how popular each new paper is. I think more attention must be paid to such factors by scientometrics society.
We need a method to track research published in Journal article to text book
Publications with journals with high IF and a high number of citations of these publications are indeed nowadays considered very important.... However, neither of these two indicators is perfect nor does it reflects undoubtedly the level of the research of a given person. There are many reasons for this (I have had previously the opportunity to answer to similar questions by other research gate members with more details). Here I would like to mention only two reasons, which in my opinion, are probably the most important ones: IF varies significantly between research areas and can be a real measure to compare research performance only within a given research area - i.e. it is not an universal indicator; next as to the citations - of course, a high number of citations (excluding self-citations) is a good indicator that that a given paper has provoked an impact in the research community; however, there Is no guaranty that the impact has been positive. A high number of citations may be also due to a paper, which contains wrong statements and has been cited to be criticized! Therefore, if you want to be sure never rely only on numbers (IF, number of citations, H-index, etc.), but read the publication and try to evaluate its impact by the comments and the contribution it brings to the underlying science
" but read the publication and try to evaluate its impact by the comments and the contribution it brings to the underlying science" Impossible proposition, for an administrator it is impossible to read all applicants research papers, have to rely on some numbers.
"Therefore, if you want to be sure never rely only on numbers (IF, number of citations, H-index, etc.), but read the publication and try to evaluate its impact by the comments and the contribution it brings to the underlying science " was the whole phrase... If just the second part is considered, one might erroneously understand what it meant to say, which was that he numbers are certainly not useless but "if you want to be sure never rely only on numbers (IF, number of citations, H-index, etc.). This is possible of course if the funding body is wiling to do it and have appointed for the purpose experts in the specific field, if it is just to an administrator to decide, anyway he/she would most probably does not have the capability of distinguishing whether or not the contribution is novel and important...
I suppose with increased computing it will be more possible to follow multiple things for an investigators publications such as downloads and other impact. Certainly looking at how much a given paper is cited is more important how the journal overall.
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