title: Science deserves to be judged by its contents, not by its wrapping: Revisiting Seglen's work on journal impact and research evaluation.
abstract: The scientific foundation for the criticism on the use of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in evaluations of individual researchers and their publications was laid between 1989 and 1997 in a series of articles by Per O. Seglen. His basic work has since influenced initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Leiden Manifesto for research metrics, and The Metric Tide review on the role of metrics in research assessment and management. Seglen studied the publications of only 16 senior biomedical scientists. We investigate whether Seglen's main findings still hold when using the same methods for a much larger group of Norwegian biomedical scientists with more than 18,000 publications. Our results support and add new insights to Seglen's basic work.
authors.affiliation: Dept. Management and Economics, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou, China.|Centre for R&D Monitoring (ECOOM) and Dept. MSI, KU Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0526-9677
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Dept. Mathematics, KU Leuven & Fac. of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Ronald
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rousseau
authors.affiliation: Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Gunnar
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sivertsen
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D055811:Journal Impact Factor; D011643:Publishing / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012106:Research / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012108:Research Personnel / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012586:Science / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*