This originally appeared at: http://blogs.egu.eu/palaeoblog/?p=1162
“I am sick of impact factors and so is science.”
Stephen Curry said it best back in 2012. The impact factor is just one of the many banes of academia, from it’s complete misuse to being falsely inflated by publishers.
I want to draw attention to a new article that addresses the causes behind this ‘impact factor mania’ that academia has.
The article is quite right to place the blame firmly in the hands of academics. It’s our fault that the impact factor is still misused. No-one else. Almost every academic knows why the impact factor is flawed, but still we use it over and over to assess the quality of a person or an article. It’s irrationality in its most blatant form, and you’d think academics would be smart enough to stop using it. But for some reason, we, as a collective, aren’t.
Green Tea and Velociraptors 