ASM Journals Eliminate Impact Factor Information from Journal Websites

Arturo Casadevall; Stefano Bertuzzi; Michael J Buchmeier; Roger J Davis; Harold Drake; Ferric C Fang; Jack Gilbert; Barbara M Goldman; Michael J Imperiale; Philip Matsumura; Alexander J McAdam; Marcela F Pasetti; Rozanne M Sandri-Goldin; Thomas Silhavy; Louis Rice; Jo-Anne H Young; Thomas Shenk

doi:10.1128/mSphere.00184-16

ASM Journals Eliminate Impact Factor Information from Journal Websites

mSphere. 2016 Jul 11;1(4):e00184-16. doi: 10.1128/mSphere.00184-16. eCollection 2016 Jul-Aug.

Authors

Arturo Casadevall¹, Stefano Bertuzzi², Michael J Buchmeier³, Roger J Davis⁴, Harold Drake⁵, Ferric C Fang⁶, Jack Gilbert⁷, Barbara M Goldman², Michael J Imperiale⁸, Philip Matsumura⁹, Alexander J McAdam¹⁰, Marcela F Pasetti¹¹, Rozanne M Sandri-Goldin¹², Thomas Silhavy¹³, Louis Rice¹⁴, Jo-Anne H Young¹⁵, Thomas Shenk¹³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
² American Society for Microbiology (ASM), Washington, DC, USA.
³ Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA.
⁴ Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, Maryland, USA, and Program in Molecular Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.
⁵ Department of Ecological Microbiology, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany.
⁶ University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington, USA.
⁷ Department of Surgery, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
⁸ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
⁹ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
¹⁰ Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
¹¹ Center for Vaccine Development and Department of Pediatrics, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
¹² Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, Irvine, California, USA.
¹³ Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
¹⁴ Departments of Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Abstract

Many scientists attempt to publish their work in a journal with the highest possible journal impact factor (IF). Despite widespread condemnation of the use of journal IFs to assess the significance of published work, these numbers continue to be widely misused in publication, hiring, funding, and promotion decisions (1, 2).