Abstract
In today’s world of competition for economic survival, it is not easy to give a convincing answer to the question in the title of this communication. As authors, researchers, academicians, leaders of research programmes and scholars, we cannot afford to ignore the subject of impact Factor because it is directly and indirectly affecting our livelihoods at all levels in the society, as decisions are now being made based on them to evaluate our performances and that of companies, departments and institutions. A lot about Impact Factors has been discussed in many spheres of human life and of course, everybody is right in his/her arguments. What best defines us as what we are as individual authors, researchers, academicians and scholars should be prioritized beyond the commercial elegance being attached. A careful and serious consideration need to be taken in order to avoid jeopardizing productive and developmental research. Having known the malpractices of Editors - in - Chief to attain a high Impact Factors for their respective journals, is it worthwhile therefore, maintaining the Impact Factor as a proxy measure of quality of research and academia in the society? Considering the origin and evolution of Impact Factor as an index metric measure for research journals and human malpractice nature, it is not prudent therefore for Impact Factor to be used to assess the quality and capability of individual authors, researchers, academicians, research programmes and scholars as well as institutions and/or companies.
Highlights
Background of impact factorImpact factor (IF) or Journal Impact Factor (JIF) has been variably defined as a measure of the average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal in a particular year under consideration to indicate the relative significant value or rank of that journal within its field
The impact factorImpact factor (IF) of any one given journal is calculated as the number of citations received in that year of articles published in that journal during the two preceding years divided by the total number of articles published in that journal during the two preceding
The commercial value attached to the IF is currently compromising the initial intention to identify and rate quality research and academia as Editor-in-Chiefs of various journals have increasingly adopted and employed insidious tactics of editorial policies that allow them to increase the Impact Factor of their respective journals unfairly [4,5]
Summary
Impact factor (IF) or Journal Impact Factor (JIF) has been variably defined as a measure of the average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal in a particular year under consideration to indicate the relative significant value or rank of that journal within its field. The intention of Garfield’s (1) ideas on Citation Indexing and Analysis (CIA) was to allow authors, researchers, academicians and scholars to expedite their research process, evaluate the impact of their work, spot scientific trends, and trace the history of modern scientific thoughts.
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