THE MISUSE OF THE IMPACT FACTOR

The Impact Factor, as published by the Institute of Scientific
Information (ISI) in Philadelphia in its Journal Citation
Reports (JCR), is used by some department heads in
some countries in faculty assessments. But nowhere in the
world is the Impact Factor used as a criterion for rating
and ranking scientists across the board nationally, as has
been done in Pakistan.

ISI’s website has this to say of its JCR: “The ISI Journal
Citation Report is a unique multidisciplinary database,
ideal for a broad range of practical applications by a variety
of information professionals. It presents quantifiable
statistical data that provides a systematic, objective way
to determine the relative importance of journals within
their subject categories.” The website also mentions some
possible uses of the JCR Impact Factor, including that it
“enables a variety of information professionals to access
key journal data, including librarians, publishers, editors,
authors, and information analysts.” But nowhere does it
mention that the JCR should be used to determine the
worth of scientists, least of all to rank them nationally in
order of merit.

In Pakistan the rationale for the use of the Impact Factor
is to “help the administrators of science to evaluate the
quality and output of scientists who seek key positions.”
The National Commission on Science has made it a part of
its policy to rate scientists and their work on the basis of
impact factors of their research papers in accordance with
the list of Impact Factors published by the ISI. However,
ISI’s Impact Factor puts mathematicians in a disadvantageous
position, because the index is not suitable for
research in mathematics.

Journals of physics and engineering for instance have
much greater Impact Factors than mathematical journals,
not because they are qualitatively better, but because they
have a wider readership and the time spent from acceptance
of a paper to its publication is much shorter. The ISI
has listed 321 journals under the subject of mathematics,
and only 15.58 percent of mathematics journals have impact
factors greater than 1. Only four journals have impact
factors greater than 2, the highest being 2.75.

The list produced by the ISI itself is defective. For
instance, there are a number of high-standard journals
which are not mentioned in the list. The Mathematical
Reviews of the AMS reviews papers every month published
in some 1,800 mathematical journals. There are many wellrespected
journals which are not included in the list.

One critical study of the ISI has revealed that there are
63 journals directly related to chemistry, 5 journals directly
related to mathematics, 34 journals directly related
to physics, and 430 journals directly related to biology
which have an Impact Factor higher than 2. The highest
Impact Factor of a sole journal in mathematics is of
Differentiation (4.0). One notes that in medical sciences,
one journal has the Impact Factor 38.854. This means
that if one publishes one paper in this journal, one gets
an Impact Factor equal to 38.854, whereas if a mathematician
publishes 40 research papers in the best journals of
mathematics, he or she will get a cumulative Impact Factor
equal to only 19.844. Young Pakistani mathematicians are
now reluctant to do research in mathematics, as they feel
that publishing papers in top mathematical journals is not
only difficult but receives no recognition or appreciation
due to low Impact Factors and citations. This trend is thus
damaging for mathematics.

It is unfair to rate mathematicians on the basis of
Impact Factors of their research papers. It is bizarre that
one’s status could be determined by the arbitrary assignments
of numbers to the journals in which one happened
to publish. Most intelligent scientists and administrators
are well aware of two facts: one, that we do not yet have
reliable bibliographic measures for comparing or making
absolute ratings of the value of the work done by research
workers; two, that in any event, bibliographic measures
appropriate in one field are inappropriate in others. An
impact value based on the simple measurement of how
many times a journal is cited makes no sense as a measure
of the quality of the papers published in it, let alone the
quality of the mathematicians publishing there. Such use
of management-type figures which claim to enable comparisons
to be made can be utterly misleading and damaging.
Figures are only as good as the premises on which the
figures are based, and often the premises of many widely
touted management figures are seriously flawed, as in
the case of Impact Factors. The only real criterion for an
individual’s scholarship is quality of work, and that does
not admit of simple numerical assessment.
—Qaiser Mushtaq
Professor of Mathematics
Quaid-i-Azam University

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