As I understand it from a distance, in the UK the grants for the support
of academic departments depend upon the publishing record. In fact, they
depend upon it in a particularly brutal way--the papers must be published
in journals above a certain impact factor value.

This is, of course, not how impact factors are intended to use, and the
publications from ISI are pretty explicit about that. For one thing, they
are only meaningful with specific disciplines. The impact factor that puts
a zoology journal near the top of the list would be very unimpressive for
biochemistry, because of the different frequencies and time scales of
citation in the two fields. For another, the very high impact factors are
usually but not always for review journals, because of the relatively
small number of articles they contain and the high frequency with which
that type of material is cited. I think this shows the bureaucratic
tendency to rely on a number, any number, rather than real evaluation.

I would be glad to hear from those who know better that things are not
really run in that unintelligent a fashion.

Chris Brown-Syed wrote:
>
> It would be very interesting to have a perspective on publishing patterns
> from someone in the UK, where Thatcher's Torries largely dismantled tenure
> several years ago and forced small colleges to merge into larger
> universities. I have an idea about how to address this topic, but I can't
> share it right now. I need to publish it first. ;-)
>
> cbs
> ---
>        Chris Brown-Syed PhD. Editor, Library & Archival Security.
>        <mailto:ad6509@wayne.edu> <http://valinor.purdy.wayne.edu>
>      Never give up if the objective is worthwhile - Lionel Gregory.

--
David Goodman
Biology Librarian, and
Co-Chair, Electronic Journals Task Force
Princeton University Library
dgoodman@princeton.edu         http://www.princeton.edu/~biolib/
phone: 609-258-3235            fax: 609-258-2627