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2009 24: 260J Child NeurolRoger A. Brumback

The Empire Strikes Back−−Impact Factor Wars: Episode V  

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Editorial

Impact Factor Wars:Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back

Roger A. Brumback, MD

Too bad it is not ‘‘A long time ago in a galaxy far,far away . . . ’’ Instead, it is the 21st century andEuropean, Canadian, and American scientists are

now in the grips of a menace that threatens their liveli-hood: the journal impact factor (a proprietary calculationbased on journal citations and produced by the monolithicnews and information empire Thomson Reuters) is beingused in many places to determine academic employment,rank, tenure, and funding.1-9 In the past, few voices haveprotested the abusive power associated with journalimpact factor, and publishers generally shrank in terrorat the prospect of their journals being subjected to the‘‘death penalty’’—removal from the Thomson Reutersjournal impact factor listing. However, in 2007, theExecutive Director of the powerful Rockefeller UniversityPress, along with the Executive Editors of the Journal ofExperimental Medicine and the Journal of Cell Biology,courageously questioned the validity and reliability of thejournal impact factor calculations.10,11 These editorials(by Mike Rossner, Heather Van Epps, and Emma Hill)emboldened others to voice concerns about the use ofan unverifiable and proprietary metric—journal impactfactor—to evaluate the quality of scientific work.5,8,9,12-43

In the initial 1977 film (now designated ‘‘Episode IV’’)of the epic Star Wars movie series by George Lucas, theGalactic Empire uses a lethal show of force (the DeathStar) to destroy the relatively insignificant planet Alderaanin order to frighten the rest of the galactic inhabitants(particularly those on the larger planets) into submission.Apparently, Thomson Reuters has decided to use a similartactic: wielding its enormous power in a show of force

against a tiny journal. As has been widely described, thejournal impact factor is calculated by summing the totalcitations during a given year to articles published in theprevious 2 years and dividing this by the number of‘‘items’’ (a number derived secretively by Thomson Reu-ters) published in the journal during that same 2-yearperiod.10,11,13,16,23,24,44 The ability of journal editors andpublishers (particularly large and influential ones) tomanipulate (and negotiate) the journal impact factor toachieve higher values has been well documented.16,25,45-53

Unfortunately, journals from small subspecialty fields areat a distinct disadvantage with fewer articles for possiblecitation, a smaller population of investigators, and littleleverage to finagle higher journal impact factor values.Nonetheless, 2 clever scientists, Harm K. Schutte andJan G. Svec, who work in a small scientific field publishedin the year 2007 an editorial in the official organ of theInternational Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics(IALP)—Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica (published byS. Karger AG, Basel)—in which they cited all 66 articlespublished in that journal during the years 2005 and2006.54 This strategy of self-citation raised the journalimpact factor from a value of 0.655 for 2006 to 1.439 for2007 and jumped the journal’s ranking by 9 places in thesubject category of ‘‘Rehabilitation’’ (which only contains27 journals). For investigators whose only scholarly outletis publishing in this journal, such changes in journal statuscould profoundly affect their ability to compete for anacademic livelihood. This permutation probably wouldhave gone unnoticed but for a letter published in theSeptember 11, 2008, issue of Nature.55 Subsequent reac-tion by Thomson Reuters was swift: just 4 weeks later onOctober 9, 2008, in Nature, James Testa reported thatself-citation is ‘‘reviewed each year’’ and that journalswill be removed from Journal Citation Reports until the‘‘problem of excessive self-citation resolves and we canpublish an accurate impact factor.’’56

One strategy by journal editors to manipulate thejournal impact factor has been to demand thatauthors cite articles from recent years of the journal (ie,self-citation).16,50,51 Thomson Reuters does not provideany criteria for acceptable self-citation, although it hasbeen reported that up to 20% self-citation is common inmost journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports.12

Received December 29, 2008. Accepted for publication December 29,2008.

From the Journal of Child Neurology, Creighton University School ofMedicine, Omaha, Nebraska.

The author is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Child Neurology, whichreceives a journal impact factor listing in the Thomson Reuters JournalCitation Reports.

Address correspondence to: Roger A. Brumback, Journal of Child Neurol-ogy, Creighton University Medical Center, 601 North 30th Street,Omaha, NE 68131; e-mail: rogerbrumback@creighton.edu.

Brumback RA. Impact factor wars: episode V—the empire strikes back.J Child Neurol. 2009;24:260-262

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Journal of Child Neurology

Volume 24 Number 3

March 2009 260-262

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Interestingly, according to the ISI Web of Knowledgefor the year 2007, the Journal of Child Neurology (journalimpact factor of 1.240) had a 5.5% self-citation rate(9 of 181 citations to year 2006 articles were self-citations and 20 of 341 citations to year 2005 articles wereself-citations). In comparison, for the year 2007, the self-citation rate (for some other journals familiar to childneurologists) was: Developmental Medicine and ChildNeurology (journal impact factor 2.433)—20% self-citation rate; Pediatrics (journal impact factor 4.473)—11% self-citation rate; Journal of Neuroscience (journalimpact factor 7.490)—10% self-citation rate; and Neurology(journal impact factor 6.014)—7% self-citation rate.Thus, the self-citation rate of 70.5% by Folia Phoniatricaet Logopaedica in 2007 seems large, but without explicitlydefined rules about self-citation, this practice should notbe condemned as has been done by Thomson Reuters.

The plight of individual investigators (Figure 1) assignedworth by administrators using furtive journal impactfactor values supplied by profiteering Thomson Reutersshould energize scientists, journal editors, and publishersto band together (much like the Rebel Alliance in the StarWars epic) for an acceptable solution. Until such time, itis likely that individuals will continue to ‘‘game the sys-tem’’ in an attempt to protect their careers.13,16,52,53

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