Despite the recent downpour of evidence against the use of Thomson's BIF, I still get comments from people such as "However, IFs are still the most used way of evaluating a researcher's career and value. Even if we find this ridiculous, it's just the way it is." or "in our institution, every researcher has to publish in journals whose BIF is at least 5.". In the light of the current state of affairs concerning the BIF, this is just embarrassing. So here are the top three reasons why the BIF is dead:
And of course, there is some other, more transparent and accurate journal ranking tool available (ScImago) for those inclined to such siliness, but as journals will also become obsolete in the foreseeable future, scientific reputation building will happen rather differently than today.
- The BIF is negotiable and doesn't reflect actual citation counts (source)
- The BIF cannot be reproduced, even if it reflected actual citations (source)
- The BIF is not statistically sound, even if it were reproducible and reflected actual citations (source)
And of course, there is some other, more transparent and accurate journal ranking tool available (ScImago) for those inclined to such siliness, but as journals will also become obsolete in the foreseeable future, scientific reputation building will happen rather differently than today.
Posted on Wednesday 23 July 2008 - 15:08:54 comment: 0
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