The Growing Importance of the Impact Factor

[qwopty99]

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hi folks,

i'd like to get a "historical" perspective (let's say last 15 yrs or so) on the growing importance of the impact factor.

i'm a very recent faculty member at a university in Asia. i can tell u that EVERYTHING is about impact factor. it is the be-all of one's academic output. yet, i hear that in north america, as of late, IF is of GROWING importance.

i'm not familiar with an academic world wear IF isn't everything. what was it like before this? it's said now, that a PhD dissertation can simply be a collection of 3 or 4 articles that one publishes in SCI journals - i imagine that this is due to the increased significance of IF. but in the "old" days, wasn't there any effort to publish one's dissertation in journals - or was the published dissertation, in and of itself, viewed as good enough?

just curious to know what academics/publishing used to be like, and where it might be heading.

 

[Genetics]

Click on the following website for information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor

Personally, I think the Impact Factor comes into play when it comes for getting grants and getting tenured. A lot of science that is published in the big journals turn out to be junk science in a couple of years, since the data can't be replicated. I have stoped reading the discussion section of journal articles becasue of so many crazy ideas that are written and the over importance of the work done by the scienctists is way overblown.

I read more specialized journals since I'm working towards becoming a genetic counselor. The journals I read (with the exception of 2) have what would be considered low IF's, but I find the work better, or more well done. A lot of the articles published in Science and Nature are rushed from the lab to the journal without replications in the lab before being published and a junky paper can get pulished in the big journals just by having a big name on the author list.






i'm a very recent faculty member at a university in Asia. i can tell u that EVERYTHING is about impact factor. it is the be-all of one's academic output. yet, i hear that in north america, as of late, IF is of GROWING importance.

i'm not familiar with an academic world wear IF isn't everything. what was it like before this? it's said now, that a PhD dissertation can simply be a collection of 3 or 4 articles that one publishes in SCI journals - i imagine that this is due to the increased significance of IF. but in the "old" days, wasn't there any effort to publish one's dissertation in journals - or was the published dissertation, in and of itself, viewed as good enough?

just curious to know what academics/publishing used to be like, and where it might be heading.[/QUOTE]

 

[RxnMan]

...but in the "old" days, wasn't there any effort to publish one's dissertation in journals - or was the published dissertation, in and of itself, viewed as good enough?...

I cannot comment on the other parts of your post, but I can tell you about how a graduate thesis is or can be treated. Masters level work should be publishable (1-2 articles is great), but it is not necessary to complete the degree (at my alma mater). PhDs must publish in order to get the degree. I have been told, that had I pursued publication as a result of my graduate work, I could have just submitted the final published articles as my thesis. Why? well, dissertations are huge - my master's thesis was over a hundred pages, and my advisor's PhD dissertation was over 400 pages. Something like that just won't get published in any journal these days - it'd take up an entire edition!

I think submitting a series of accepted/published articles is good, if not better than writing an entire dissertation. There are a whole series of skills that goes into making a paper published that should be learned by a proto-PhD. Learning to write with brevity is another skill. And reading 3-4 articles is much easier on your advisor than 200-400 pages!