Finally the most critical point about IF is that it can be manipulated by Editors or Publishers. Here are some examples:
Editors may choose to publish more reviews, hoping that they get more citations. Editors may decrease the number of
published citable manuscripts, thus decreasing the number in the denominator of the equation to calculate the IF and thus
increasing the IF. Furthermore papers with a higher probability to be quoted are published early in the year, because they
have more time to generate citations. 3,4
There are some more methods to increase the IF, which I consider unethical. One is that the editor actively promotes some
papers from his journal as interesting and citable to his/her peers. Another step is that some editors tend to “help” authors
to improve the article and have it published with the Editor ending on the author line in the hope to increase the IF of the
journal as well the personal cumulative IF of the Editor. Finally some Editors and/or publishers practice something that is
called “coercive citation”. 5,6 At the end of the review process they confront the authors with a list of papers that have been
published in “their” journal and require the authors to add them to their reference list as a prerequisite for publication!
The newest thing that has appeared is fake impact factor, used by so called predatory publishers. They create an IF with
publications that are not listed with ISI. 7 Therefore, dear readers, think twice when you look at an IF! It is obvious that the IF is
NOT a number indicating the quality of a paper. It is much better to look at the content to make your judgement!
Sincerely yours,
J-F Roulet
Editor-in-Chief
References
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DOI:10.25241/stomaeduj.2017.4(4).edit.1
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