Impact of Social Sciences – The demise of the Impact Factor: The strength of the relationship between citation rates and IF is down to levels last seen 40 years ago

" ... Using a huge dataset of over 29 million papers and 800 million citations, we showed that from 1902 to 1990 the relationship between IF and paper citations had been getting stronger, but as predicted, since 1991 the opposite is true: the variance of papers’ citation rates around their respective journals’ IF has been steadily increasing. Currently, the strength of the relationship between IF and paper citation rate is down to the levels last seen around 1970. Furthermore, we found that until 1990, of all papers, the proportion of top (i.e., most cited) papers published in the top (i.e., highest IF) journals had been increasing. So, the top journals were becoming the exclusive depositories of the most cited research. However, since 1991 the pattern has been the exact opposite. Among top papers, the proportion NOT published in top journals was decreasing, but now it is increasing. Hence, the best (i.e., most cited) work now comes from increasingly diverse sources, irrespective of the journals’ IFs. If the pattern continues, the usefulness of the IF will continue to decline, which will have profound implications for science and science publishing. For instance, in their effort to attract high-quality papers, journals might have to shift their attention away from their IFs and instead focus on other issues, such as increasing online availability, decreasing publication costs while improving post-acceptance production assistance, and ensuring a fast, fair and professional review process. At some institutions researchers receive a cash reward for publishing a paper in journals with a high IF, usually Nature and Science. These rewards can be significant, amounting to up to $3K USD inSouth Korea and up to $50K USD inChina. InPakistan a $20K reward is possible for cumulative yearly totals. In Europe andNorth America the relationship between publishing in high IF journals and financial rewards is not as explicitly defined, but it is still present ..."