Technology and Innovation Has Made Impact Factor Redundant—Better Alternatives Are Here to Thrive

Abstract

Three recent publications have let the cat out of the bag. They are “Stop Congratulating Colleagues for Publishing in High Impact-Factor Journals,” “Who are the real parasite publishers and journals? What prevents all medical data from being open access in real time?” and “Against Parasite Publishers: Making Journals Free.”1–3 For long impact factor (IF) has ruled the academic publishing world. It has expanded its sphere of influence on career progress, appointments in academic institutions, promotion reviews, and grant applications. IF is popular since 1975 and is based on the number of citations that the journal received in the previous 2 years. For instance, if our article is published in the year 2022, the IF that the journal in which our article is published will be decided on the citations received by the journal in the years 2020 and 2021. Authors are cognizant of the significance of IF because journals with higher IF are considered as respectable, their review process is supposed to be selective, there is greater scrutiny of articles submitted, and if published, the authors are considered worthy by their peers. Publications in journals with high IF also cascade into wider publicity through reporting by science journals and social media. They also have a higher chance of being included in reports on new publications. As the definition suggests, there is also a higher chance of being cited by other scientists working in the field. However, IF has a very important flaw. All the metrics are related to the journal. There is no evaluation of the individual publication or the author who has done the research work. Therefore, having a publication in a high IF journal does not guarantee that your work will be cited. In fact, more than two-thirds of publications in such journals have fewer citations than the IF of the journal.4 By experience, we have found that using the right keywords does wonders to online access. When the research work is great, those interested in the subject can easily find it on the net. Searchable databases such as Scopus, Google Scholar, and Web of Science make this possible. There are also niche areas in science andmedicine, where journals with high IF simply do not exist. The research communities in such fields are small and usually know each other well. So, they tend to find work of colleagues online even if published in journals with IF of 3 or 4. As journals with high IF are in “great demand,” their review process is time consuming and ultimately most of thework submitted does not get accepted. In the process, our data may become redundant in today’s exponentially progressive research environment. Can we afford to face this? The final stumbling block is that if such journals are open access, they command a high premium in terms of publication “processing fees.” For instance, last year, Nature announced a princely sum of Euro 9,500 as their charges if the authors wanted their article to have open access. Clearly, this is an elitist attitudewhere rich publishing houseswant to get richer at the cost of dissemination of information. This has a major health care implication.Work from lowandmediumincome countries (LMIC) will not be published in such journals. Or the work will be behind a paywall that the LMIC colleagues cannot surmount.5 No wonder global citation inequality is increasing. Data between 2000 and 2015 encompassing 1million authors and 26million scientific publications show interesting confirmation of the same.6 Citations have increased from 14 to 21% only for the tip 1% of most cited researchers. The increasing trend was most prominent in the Netherland, Denmark, Australia, and United Kingdom. Interestingly, it showed a decline in the United States and China. IF has actually become so frustrating and misleading that many grant providers have started ignoring any reference to Purvish M. Parikh