Dispelling the myths surrounding the Research Excellence Framework

Abstract

In a recent discussion with a colleague from the UK, we learned that scientists in his department are currently under pressure to submit their work to the highest impact journal they can in order to have the greatest impact in the upcoming Research Exercise Framework (REF) for the UK’s academic units. Unfortunately, he pointed out that, under these constraints, RCM – as well as JASMS, JMS, IJMS and EJMS – does not fit the journal profile to which they were asked to publish. Instead, Analytical Chemistry and similar multidisciplinary journals with higher impact factors are favoured by the university. For us at RCM, this is an interesting and somewhat frustrating situation. Does it mean, for mass spectrometry, that articles from the UKmay be re-routed to more generalist journals such as JACS and Analytical Chemistry rather than the core mass spectrometry journals? And if that is the case, how are authors going to pitch (or reformat) their mass spectrometry articles, so a generalist journal will accept them? Let’s be honest about this, most of the typical RCM, JASMS, JMS, IJMS or EJMS articles will not find favor with editors of generalist analytical chemistry journals because of the very specialized nature of the research. Of course, this is exactly the reason for the existence of community journals such as RCM and other mass spectrometry journals. Interestingly, among the many articles and opinions on the subject of ‘impact’ assessment, we came across the following statement by Zwahlen et al. who make particular reference to the UK situation, “We share. . . concern about the epidemic of impactitis, which appears to rage in Germany and elsewhere. One country which appears to be to some extent immune against this disease is the United Kingdom”. Well, this immunity certainly does not appear to be present in every academic institution in the UK. The above situation has prompted us to take a closer look at the importance of impact factors, modern research assessments tools and the factors and interactions that ultimately determine the ’impact’ of generalist, multidisciplinary versus community journals, with particular reference to the upcoming REF exercise.