At the Annual Meeting of The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in San Francisco on 16 December 2012, a group of editors and publishers of scientific journals elaborated a collection of eighteen recommendations which should increase the quality of research assessment. Inter alia, they point out the fact that the Journal Impact Factor, which serves today as the primary parameter for the comparison of scientific outputs, was originally created as a tool to help librarians identify journals to purchase, not as a measure of the scientific quality of research in an article.
The group agreed that the Journal Impact Factor, which has literally become an ‘obsession’ in
global science, in fact deforms the assessment of scientific results. At the stimulus of its
Scientific Council, the Academy of Sciences of the CR has joined the San Francisco Declaration of
Research Assessment as one of the 78 original signatory scientific and research institutions and
international scientific societies. You can find its full text
here.
Prepared by: Department of Media Communications of the Head Office of the ASCR
3 Jun 2013
