The Journal Impact Factor: A brief history, critique, and discussion of adverse effects

TL;DR

The paper reviews the history, limitations, and adverse effects of the Journal Impact Factor, highlighting its influence on scientific practices and discussing alternative metrics and future directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of JIF's history, critiques its limitations, and discusses the negative impacts on research behavior and evaluation practices.

Findings

JIF has significant influence on scientific publishing and careers.

Limitations include skewed citation distributions and disciplinary differences.

Adverse effects include research distortion and metric inflation.

Abstract

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is, by far, the most discussed bibliometric indicator. Since its introduction over 40 years ago, it has had enormous effects on the scientific ecosystem: transforming the publishing industry, shaping hiring practices and the allocation of resources, and, as a result, reorienting the research activities and dissemination practices of scholars. Given both the ubiquity and impact of the indicator, the JIF has been widely dissected and debated by scholars of every disciplinary orientation. Drawing on the existing literature as well as on original research, this chapter provides a brief history of the indicator and highlights well-known limitations-such as the asymmetry between the numerator and the denominator, differences across disciplines, the insufficient citation window, and the skewness of the underlying citation distributions. The inflation of the JIF and the weakening predictive power is discussed, as well as the adverse effects on the behaviors of individual actors and the research enterprise. Alternative journal-based indicators are described and the chapter concludes with a call for responsible application and a commentary on future developments in journal indicators.