Citation
Wilson, A. E. 2007. Journal impact factors are inflated. BioScience 57(7):550-551.
Abstract
Scientific articles produced by for-profit publishers cost consumers five times more, per page, than articles published by nonprofit presses (Bergstrom and Bergstrom 2006). This finding is disturbing, given that library budgets are constrained (Frazier 2001) and librarians have to make hard decisions about which journals to order, maintain, and cancel. In addition to feedback from institutional users about their specific journal interests, many librarians use information provided by Thomson Scientific’s Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to rank the value of specific journals. Since 1975, Thomson Scientific has produced the annual JCR, which includes the Institute for Scientific Information’s index of journal impact factors.