Journal rankings: What is it about this modest little metric that causes such uproar in the research community? Hiring, tenure, and grant awards are often influenced by whether or not one's research has been published in a journal deemed "prestigious" by its placement in the ranks. Libraries routinely use rankings to justify or slash subscriptions. More troubling is the accusation that the direction of research has been skewed toward the publication of "fashionable" or high-profile topics, the kind that get into the journals with the highest rankings, while less popular but important work gets passed over. For decades, the gold standard for journal ranking has been ISI's Impact Factor (IF), which is determined by a simple yet elegant algorithm: Tally the number of citations to a journal, and divide this by the number of articles published in that journal over a two-year period.
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