If enough eminent people stand together to condemn a controversial practice, will that make it stop?
That’s what more than 150 scientists and 75 science organizations are hoping for today, with a joint statement called the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). It deplores the way some metrics — especially the notorious Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — are misused as quick and dirty assessments of scientists’ performance and the quality of their research papers.
“There is a pressing need to improve the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated,” DORA says.
