Re: Open access and impact factor

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Interesting questions.

Is impact itself, important though it might be, really a good measure of
merit?

For example:  if an area in science is suddenly deemed to have economic
significance, and therefore attracts reseach funding, so that articles in
that area are suddenly cited much more frequently, does this mean their
merit has increased?

To put it another way, if an environmental scientist writes a definitive
article about a species of mosquito which is about to become extinct, and
no one reads it because no one cares, does that prove that the article has
no merit?  Or, if the importance of the species is suddenly understood 50
years later and citations begin to appear, has merit increased?

If an article receives many, many citations as an interesting example of
academic fraud, does this mean it has merit?

Do articles that are within-paradigm receive more citations than articles
reflecting the view of an emerging paradigm?  Does this reflect merit?  
Could an over-reliance on impact as a measure of merit lead to increasing
conservatism within scholarly endeavours?

If scholarly information becomes totally open access, and citations to
scientific research are found to be much less than citations to popular
music, does this prove that popular music has greater academic merit or
importance?

Do articles that are written in languages which are read by fewer people
of instrinsically less value or merit than articles in more common
languages?

Impact - or usage - are easy means of measuring the value of scholarly
information, but not necessarily the best.  Wouldn't it be better to rely
on more objective means of determining merit?  That is the one of purposes
of peer review, is it not?

If work that is important is not being read, do we bury it, cancel our
subscriptions - or educate readers?

Thanks for raising some interesting issues, Rick.

cheers,

Heather Morrison