Apparently Bjorn has a thing about the impact factor and academic publication - who would have guessed? - Cameron Neylon

Should be a nice lively session. Assuming people are awake - Deepak Singh

Yesterday's session on open access showed were not preaching to choir (disagreement) so changing the specific focus of this session - Cameron Neylon

too many papers to read - Cameron Neylon

heirachy of journals - filtering via impact factor - Cameron Neylon

who picks the journals? usually the PI (who is friends with the editor)... - propter doc

explaining how impact factor is calculated - Cameron Neylon

you can like it all you like Neil - we still don't believe you exist... - Cameron Neylon

Presenting the IF equation - Deepak Singh

http://brightkite.com/objects... - Deepak Singh

depending on negotiation with thomson impact factors can change quite a lot (PLoS medicine might have had one ranging from 2-11 in first year) - Cameron Neylon

Numbers can shift from year to year - Current biology had either 528 or 300 articles published in 2001 (presumably not both) - Cameron Neylon

Numbers are not reproducible - Cameron Neylon

What is a "proper" criterion? Very subjective - Deepak Singh

Henry Gee tells story of Thomson getting concerned re: Nature Futures story which was a fake review from 3000 citing two articles from 3000. Thomson got in a twist because couldn't find the citations. - Cameron Neylon

IF is not mathematically sounds, with weak correlation of individual article article rate with IF - Deepak Singh

distribution of citations within journals are left skewed so an averaget is a very poor measure anyway - Cameron Neylon

So how could "impact" really measured - Cameron Neylon

Deepak asking question as to whether people choose journals according to impact factor - Cameron Neylon

Impact factors ae apparently more important in some countries (e.g. China) and some areas of research (e.g. biomedical). - Martin Fenner

Discussion of how impact factors are used - mention of cash incentives in some countries - Cameron Neylon

Christina P making point that BioMed science has very different impact factors to others - Cameron Neylon

John Dupuis .... Univ admins are more obsessed with IF - Deepak Singh

John Dupuis - university administrators need metrics of some sort and are obsessive about measurement - Cameron Neylon

Discussion heading to whether we need metrics at all...much disagreement - Cameron Neylon

Obsession with Impact Factors is like SEO. - Martin Fenner

Deepak - says IF is like SEO - Cameron Neylon

citations are not a reflection of qualtiy, rather reputation or marketing skill of authors - propter doc

Long rant by Henry Gee on why he doesn't like Impact Factors. - Martin Fenner

Long rant being the operative phrase - Deepak Singh

IFs are not good or bad, just massively overrated. - Martin Fenner

Authority 3.0 - Michael Jensen, NAP - Deepak Singh

What is good for scientists is not necessarily good for science? - Deepak Singh

is there a direct correlation between RAE scores and chem dept closures? - propter doc

Henry Gee arguing for individual level activity streams as a basis for judging activity - Deepak Singh

love rating sounds dangerously like rate your profs for scientists - propter doc

Publish articles in Chronicles of Higher Ed to start influencing admins - Deepak Singh

Dealing with funding bodies is also critical (NIH, NSF). They can be quite receptive - Deepak Singh

Would a switch to DOIs from the traditional reference methods work? Personally I believe it would - Deepak Singh

The most effective hiring committees do look at secondary criteria (citations, impact factor etc), but what distinguishes them is their ability to discern outstanding talent before it becomes obvious from those secondary criteria. Everyone knows it's a good idea to hire someone with 10,000+ citations. What's impressive about some of the very top places is their ability to pick very young people with just a few papers, who later become superstars. - Michael Nielsen

To put my last comment somewhat differently: paying overly much attention to secondary criteria like impact factor is a mistake, and a lot of people at a high level already understand that. Those who don't are badly disadvantaged in hiring, forever playing catchup. - Michael Nielsen

Ivan Oransky after the session suggested to contact Eugene Garfield ( he knows him personally) to serve as a figurehead for a future metrics aggregator. I think that's a great idea. - Björn Brembs

Agree with Michael's last statement. David Colquhoun passionately dislikes citation metrics, e.g. http://www.nature.com/nature... - Martin Fenner

Seminar on the evolution of impact metrics, June 15 in London: http://network.nature.com/groups... - Martin Fenner