Slightly fizzy wine flowed in Elsevier's offices last week celebrating the rise in the impact factor of the Journal of Cleaner Production from 2.727 in 2011 to 3.398 in 2012. Or so I infer from the excited report that the HEA's ESD Advisory Group received from its only international member. Well, Hej! 2.727 to 3.398 – Meteoric, or What? [Note 1]
Actually, I'm in the What camp, being as sceptical of the merit of such baubles as I am about university (and school) league tables. Publishers, of course, take such things seriously – or feign that they do – and most of them have so many journals these days that, on average, at least some of them will have made progress in this academic snakes and ladders game; and some is usually good enough, at least as far as publicity is concerned.
Impact measures are, at their worst, measures of the "You cite me, Claude, and I'll cite you old chap" tendency that the Times Higher commented on last week, pointing out that the actions of the citation cartel police (CCP) had resulted in 37 more journals being added to the banned list and excluded from the Great Game. At their best (if that's the right word), they are what they say – a measure of how much, on average, papers are cited by others. [Note 2].
But these figures are not about impact in any normal sense; they don't measure effect. Think of bare knuckle fighting; it's not how often you hit the other bloke (impact) that counts, it's how much you hurt him (effect).
Notes
[1] For the record, the highest impact factor this year is 153.459 for the cancer journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
[2] It seems that the CCP is particularly hot on self-citation, which is a tendency not unknown in papers on ESD / EE / LSD / EfS /SDE / EEfSD / ..., so editors beware.
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