Can the Journal Impact Factor Be Used as a Criterion for the Selection of Junior Researchers? A Large-Scale Empirical Study Based on ResearcherID Data

摘要

Early in researchers' careers, it is difficult to assess how good their workis or how important or influential the scholars will eventually be. Hence,funding agencies, academic departments, and others often use the Journal ImpactFactor (JIF) of where the authors have published to assess their work andprovide resources and rewards for future work. The use of JIFs in this way hasbeen heavily criticized, however. Using a large data set with many thousands ofpublication profiles of individual researchers, this study tests the ability ofthe JIF (in its normalized variant) to identify, at the beginning of theircareers, those candidates who will be successful in the long run. Instead ofbare JIFs and citation counts, the metrics used here are standardized accordingto Web of Science subject categories and publication years. The results of thestudy indicate that the JIF (in its normalized variant) is able to discriminatebetween researchers who published papers later on with a citation impact aboveor below average in a field and publication year - not only in the short term,but also in the long term. However, the low to medium effect sizes of theresults also indicate that the JIF (in its normalized variant) should not beused as the sole criterion for identifying later success: other criteria, suchas the novelty and significance of the specific research, academicdistinctions, and the reputation of previous institutions, should also beconsidered.