Why is it so difficult to understand that we cannot evaluate quality with quantities?

This is a huge problem. It is not only a question of funds, or of society skepticism or of patents and intellectual properties.

Basically to get new positions, to get money for conducting experiments, to communicate and share our results, our research is “measured” by top-ranking committees that make use of bibliometric parameters: journal impact factors (IF), number of citations (#cit) and a plethora of other obscure indices and algorithms) (1). Can you believe that the IF was originally created as a tool to help librarians select the best journals to purchase? It was not, and it is not a measure of the scientific quality of an article!

This is the best way to spoil science and to destroy the career of our younger colleagues. Publish or perish…

It is silly and fake. IF and #cit have nothing to do with quality. Recall that being cited does not immediately imply you were read.

There are tricks to increase the “visibility” of your paper. Friends cite friends in return.

We do need to assess research, but this is not the correct way.

As usual, the majority agrees. Eminent newspapers warn. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment dates back to 2013.

But nothing moves.

For more fun, you may want to check the article “Having an impact (factor)” (2).

 

1. Greco, Substantia 2017, 1, 5.
2. A. Petsko, Genome Biol. 2008, 9, 107.