San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (draft)

"There is a pressing need to improve the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated by funding agencies, academic institutions, and other parties. To address this issue, the group of editors and publishers of scholarly journals listed below met during the Annual Meeting of The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in San Francisco, CA, on December 16, 2012. The group developed a set of recommendations, referred to as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. We invite interested parties to indicate their support by adding their names to this declaration....The Journal Impact Factor is frequently used as the primary parameter with which to measure the scientific output of individuals and institutions. The Journal Impact Factor, as calculated by Thomson Reuters, 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.  With that in mind, it is critical to understand that the Journal Impact Factor has a number of well-documented deficiencies as a tool for research assessment....Below we make a number of recommendations for improving the way in which the actual quality of research output is evaluated. Outputs other than research articles will grow in importance in assessing research effectiveness in the future, but the peer-reviewed research paper will remain a central research output that informs research assessment. Our recommendations therefore focus primarily on practices relating to research articles published in peer-reviewed journals, but can and should be extended by recognising additional products, such as datasets, as important research outputs.  The recommendations are aimed at funding agencies, academic institutions, journals, organizations that supply metrics, and individual researchers...."