The impact factor obsession
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2025 3:54 am
Over the last decades, numerous studies tried to figure out which one of the traditional bibliometrics is the most accurate to measure research impact.
The most popular way to assess the researchers’ impact has been to calculate the h-index. Jorge Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California in San Diego, defined it in his paper “An portugal rcs data index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output” in 2005. He introduced the h-index as “the number of papers with citation number ≥h, as a useful index to characterize the scientific output of a researcher.”
The h-index started a whole “impact-factor obsession” era.
Recruiters started asking candidates for their h-index, and pressure was put on PhD students to publish in high-impact journals to gain additional, external funding for their research.
Also as Diana Hicks, Paul Wouters, Ludo Waltman, Sarah de Rijcke & Ismael Rafols state in Nature in 2015, “universities have become obsessed with their position in global rankings such as the Shanghai Ranking and Times Higher Education’s list,”
That comment would later become known as the “Leiden Manifesto for research metrics” and the basis for new policies on assessing research that we will mention later on.
The most popular way to assess the researchers’ impact has been to calculate the h-index. Jorge Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California in San Diego, defined it in his paper “An portugal rcs data index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output” in 2005. He introduced the h-index as “the number of papers with citation number ≥h, as a useful index to characterize the scientific output of a researcher.”
The h-index started a whole “impact-factor obsession” era.
Recruiters started asking candidates for their h-index, and pressure was put on PhD students to publish in high-impact journals to gain additional, external funding for their research.
Also as Diana Hicks, Paul Wouters, Ludo Waltman, Sarah de Rijcke & Ismael Rafols state in Nature in 2015, “universities have become obsessed with their position in global rankings such as the Shanghai Ranking and Times Higher Education’s list,”
That comment would later become known as the “Leiden Manifesto for research metrics” and the basis for new policies on assessing research that we will mention later on.