Well duh. Another year, another round of discussion on these flawed, useless outdated metrics.
- JCB editorial discussed at Life of a lab rat
- Said JCB editorial
- More discussion at The Daily Transcript
- An alternative? The SJR Indicator discussed by Martin Fenner at Nature Network
- More on the SJR at Nature News
- Said SJR
While you’re at Nature Network, enjoy Blogging Can Help You Get a Job, Continued.
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate 
Neil —
Your supposed link to the editorial actually points to the SJR page — oops.
And I while I agree that it is silly that we are relying on closed commercial systems like ISI’s impact factor and welcome open alternatives, the SJR results just seem intuitively wrong, being loaded with specialist review journals like “Annual Review of Immunology” at the top with generalist journals below.
The real reason why getting an article published in Nature or Science is exciting that the whole scientific community reads those journals, even your friends from high school who became physicists and astronomers, not just people in one sub-specialty of biology. Yes, generally that isn’t how any of the statistics are actually computed, but ones that are consistent with the high position of generalist journals are more believable.
Gah. Link fixed. Yes, my initial reaction to SJR wasn’t a glowing endorsement either. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know that it isn’t ISI impact factors.
yeah tell me about it .. part of the key performance index for me during yearly review is how many papers i published with its relevant impact factor.
an alternative?
how about a digg for journals? haha but i don’t think it will ever take off..