If anyone is interested, Thompson has just released the new Impact Factors for scientific journals. Mark Patterson takes a look at IFs for PLoS journals and puts them in cool-headed perspective.
One day, hopefully very soon, this will not be news. What I mean by it is that there soon will be better metrics - ways to evaluate individual articles and individual people in way that is transparent and useful and, hopefully, helps treat the "CNS Disease". Journals will probably have their own metrics based on the value they add, but those metrics will not affect individual researchers' careers the way they do now.
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Amen to that.
A reliance on journal impact factors to rate individual scientist work have probably done more to distort and impede scientific discovery than any amount of faith based zealots and pig ignorant politicians (you know who I'm talking about!). They are about as good at ranking how important the contents of a journal are, as first weekend box-office takings are at judging how good a movie is.
The sooner that researchers are freed from their tyranny the better!
My biggest issue with IFs is that they tend to be inflated for both review journals and journals closely linked to medicine. I'm not sure of how to correct for this, but it is something to keep in mind when evaluating IFs.
Dear Dr.Patterson
I was an author of Plos one.
Would you please give me a message why I can not find the impact factor of Plos one in 2007 at this moment? This journal published the first issue in 2006. Therefore, base on the rule of ISI, it should obtain a IF in year 2007. Alternatively, will people see it in year 2008?
Thanks a lot.
Best
Jianing
Jianing Wei: Mark has responded to that question in the comments on his post, please check over there.
Dear Dr.Patterson,
Thanks very much for releasing IF 2007.However, a lot of good journals have been missed this year, for example, Nat BioTech, Nat Cell Biology, Cell Cycle.Would you please tell me what's happen?
Best Wishes,
Dave
PLOS ONE can be found in the Master Journal List of Thomson. Anybody knows if they assign an IF to PLOS ONE next year?
I plan submitting a research article Plos one.
Would you please give me a message why I can not find the impact factor of Plos one in 2007 at this moment? will we expect a publication of Plos one IF in year 2008?
Thanks a lot
Dr Samuel Abdulkarim
I 'm an author of Plos one.
Would you please give me a message why I can not find the impact factor of Plos one in 2007 at this moment?
Are you including this Journal in the IF for 2008
Regards