A&A impact factor: the danger of productivist ideology

[Boud Roukema]

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403184

Authors: Aa. Sandqvist (Stockholm Observatory, AlbaNova, Stockholm,
Sweden)
Comments: 4 pages, to be published in A. Heck (ed.)
"Organizations and Strategies in Astronomy, Vol. 5" (Kluwer, 2004)

There is a widespread impression that the scientific journal
"Astronomy & Astrophysics" (A&A) has a smaller impact, as measured by
citations to articles, than some of the other major astronomy
journals. This impression was apparently supported - and probably
created - by the Journal Citation Report (JCR), which is prepared
annually by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Web of
Knowledge. The published poor impact factor of A&A was in fact wrong
and was due to a serious flaw in the method used by ISI Web of
Knowledge to determine it. The resulting damage inflicted upon A&A by
the JCR is incalculable.