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The Impact of Impact factors - Good for Business, but Bad for Science?

12/20/2013

 
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This blog post is about the negative effect that journal impact factors can have on the progress and development of scientific research. But I need to begin with a specific example.

About three years ago Andy Field and I decided there was a gap in the scientific journals market for a journal specifically publishing experimental psychopathology research – a journal willing to publish a range of good quality, empirically-based studies that contributed to our understanding of psychopathology and its treatment – including relevant studies conducted on non-clinical populations (especially since many clinical psychology journals had recently purposefully restricted their scope to clinical populations – and that’s an issue that I’ve posted about before)

We decided that we wanted to have complete control over the journal, including its format, the nature of the material we published, how often we published, to offer the journal to researchers and institutions as cheaply as we could, to directly reach out to the relevant research community to ask what kind of journal and content they would like (rather than be driven by a business model that sought only to sell the journal to librarians and institutions – a model that seems to be the norm for most large international scientific publishers), and to provide a range of open access options.

That journal, the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology (http://jep.textrum.com) is now about to go into its fifth volume in 2014, and has already grown from four issues a year to five.

Now here comes the dilemma. We are at a point where we can now apply for ISI registration. If successful that would mean the journal would be listed in the Thomson-Reuters Web of Knowledge index – arguably the most widely used scientific indexing database in the world. That would, of course, make the articles published by our authors more widely available to researchers than they would previously have been.

But the downside of this (some, sadly, might call it an upside!) is that in being accepted into the Web of Knowledge means your journal will now be given an impact factor and be listed in a league table of journals publishing in the same area as you. We all know that the impact factor of a journal is “highly valued” – the higher that score, the higher the supposed scientific quality of your journal and the greater the kudos to those researchers who publish in those journals. This has the effect of placing immense pressure on researchers – especially young, up-and-coming researchers – to publish primarily in high impact journals, for the sake of their “academic integrity”, and more importantly the sake of their careers (and, of course, ultimately their salary, their ability to pay their mortgages and support their families).

Who holds impact factors in highest esteem is a moot point. It is probably not researchers – but publishing in high impact journals is probably a secondary gain imposed on researchers by others. Publishing in “high impact” journals is sold to us as the gold standard for good research by university administrators, research funding bodies, research assessment exercises, librarians, and even the journal publishers themselves (there is hardly a journal website these days that doesn’t prominently display its impact factor on its home page).

But here lies the dilemma. Once the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology has an impact factor, it will judged by its position in the impact league table, this will immediately impose a pressure on us to take steps to move the journal up that table. Because we are an e-journal and are not subject to the same space and print-run limitations of paper journals, we can effectively publish all articles that our reviewers and associate editors believe are well conducted, well analyzed, relevant, and provide a contribution to knowledge – however small. And this is what we currently do. Once we have ISI registration, there is immediately the temptation to begin to set targets that will “weed out” those articles that are likely to be cited only rarely – even though they are well conducted and have been accepted through peer review. How many times have all of us, as researchers, received that decision letter from a journal editor saying something to the effect that “your submission was well received, but as you know we receive a great number of submissions and we can only accept a minority…” Most journals pride themselves on the size of their rejection rates! That is quite strange when you think they ought to be trying to encourage researchers to submit articles to them – so are they really just trying to impress the librarians who buy their subscriptions?

What I have described will be just one immediate consequence for us of acquiring an impact factor – do we make the decision not to publish perfectly acceptable pieces of research that we judge may not be well cited (with the emphasis there on the word “judge”). This in itself will make life more difficult for many researchers who find it hard to find outlets for their perfectly acceptable research.

Judgmental processes like this also distort the scientific process. As Nobel prize winner Randy Schekman has said recently, pressure to publish in high impact “elite” journals encourages researchers to cut corners and pursue trendy fields of science instead of doing the more important groundwork that science requires – a problem exacerbated by editors who are often not active scientists. It is arguably the less well-cited research that provides this groundwork for science and is important in developing consensus views of accepted knowledge through converging evidence. But this is exactly the kind of research that is most likely to be rejected from journals desperate to protect their impact factor.

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3/27/2014 07:08:26 pm

Graham I like your post as it is delivering the best idea and your thoughts are naturally about the topic you are here to discuss the Impact of the factors that are good for all business but it is bad for science. There are so many researchers that are conducting different research with the different observation. Your observation may be different from many others but your work is great.

Carol Newall
6/18/2014 10:44:59 pm

I was recently at a research centre that placed a great deal of emphasis on impact factor. In fact, they ranked journal selection on IF. I recently conducted a study that told a lovely narrative between rodent models and human research. It didn't have a clinical group, and so, I was stumped for a place to publish and was hesitant about JEP because it didn't have an IF.

I discussed journal selection with my research 'dad' (former PhD supervisor) who wasn't from the centre. He gave me this advice: "IF can be important but it should never be the only consideration. One thing researchers often fail to consider is the readership of the journal. Send it to the journal whose readership you respect and admire, and who will have the same research values as you." This was why I chose JEP as my top journal for the paper. My research specialty is in the area that JEP is trying to support, and therefore, I need to return that support by submitting my papers to JEP - regardless of IF.

Graham Davey
6/18/2014 10:55:27 pm

Carol - thanks for your thoughts on this. Much appreciated. We publish JEP primarily for researchers. I know that might sound odd, but it means that we listen to what researchers say, adapt the journal to the needs of researchers, and we also interact by email with 5,000 clinical and experimental psychopathology researchers worldwide. The contents page of each JEP issue is sent to this email list, meaning your published research will immediately reach those people with the most interest in it.

Carol Newall
6/19/2014 09:50:51 pm

I wasn't aware that JEP interacted via email with so many clinicians and researchers. That is impressive. Given that JEP has such a unique niche market (now that BRaT and J. Anxiety Disorders have limited their publications to clinical groups), it might not be hugely affected without an IF?

That said, I think I've learnt a great deal from my research centre. They are hugely successful at clinical research, and this is because they think strategically when publishing. As an ECR, I had never considered IF in publishing until I saw the systematic way in which journal were considered for each manuscript. I don't think it's possible to avoid considering IF as a contemporary researcher, given that it is so prominent in grant applications. I still use a ranking system for clinical journals but part of me always has an eye out for readership as well. It's my way of reminding myself that I can't just be a cog in the overwhelming grant machine, and to act on my own research values rather than what the grant reviewers/panels want.

Graham Davey
6/19/2014 11:48:24 pm

Well, despite what I've said in this blog post, we have just submitted JEP to Thompson Reuters for ISI registration (which would put content on Web of Knowledge and give us an impact factor). We will see how that process goes before making any decisions about the future of JEP.

Carol Newall
9/3/2015 01:38:17 am

What was the decision? Will JEP get an impact factor?

Graham Davey
9/3/2015 02:16:08 am

Well they are supposed to be giving us a decision this month. It has taken them well over a year already. When we hadn't heard anything earlier in the summer, I emailed and discovered they'd lost their login to the JEP website so couldn't process the application! - I suspect journals from small publishers get a rather poorer deal than those from the big guns!

cobra psychology
11/5/2015 07:20:02 am

I really enjoy your journal. It's a driving force in my psychology studies. I am considering submitting to it and was wondering if you have any updates yet about the IF? Thanks!

Graham Davey
11/6/2015 01:37:00 am

Yes - we heard yesterday that Journal of Experimental Psychopathology has been selected for coverage in Web of Science - we'll get an impact factor in due course! A double edged sword!! :-)

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Tom Hollenstein
12/28/2014 10:26:22 pm

I very much appreciate your candid comments and the dilemma of modern dissemination of scientific research. I believe the attitude you project is the future. When the current grad students take the reins over the coming decades, they will not be enamoured by the physical page but instead adopt a fully accepting and integrated approach to digital media. Thus, the slippery slope you describe will be common to most if not all journals eventually.
The main issue, as you mentioned, is the quality. If the standards are clear and rigorous then accept the paper. Impact factor is like the Dow Jones - experts know it is vestigial and use other metrics for understanding macro economic status. Keep the standards, allow for the overly simplified IF metric, and trust that with those standards quality researchers will read and value the journal.

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    Author

    Graham C. L. Davey, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sussex, UK. His research interests extend across mental health problems generally, and anxiety and worry specifically. Professor Davey has published over 140 articles in scientific and professional journals and written or edited 16 books including Psychopathology; Clinical Psychology; Applied Psychology; Complete Psychology; Worrying & Psychological Disorders; and Phobias: A Handbook of Theory, Research & Treatment. He has served as President of the British Psychological Society, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Experimental Psychopathology and Psychopathology Review. When not writing about psychology he watches football and eats curries.

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