"it is harder to hide the impact of your papers; tools like Google Scholar and the ISI Web of Science are being used by tenure committees and employers to define metrics for the quality of your work. It used to be that just the journal name was used as a metric. In the digital world, everyone knows if a paper has little impact. Try to publish in journals that have high impact factors"

Isn't this ouroboric?

The article is an interesting enumeration, generally, until the tenth point which analyzes, correctly, that there is no hiding the 'impact of your paper' but then goes on to suggest that one should 'try to publish in journals that have high impact factors'?


The age of instant metrics (e.g. on PLoS sites), immediate assessment of citations (Google scholar), and open access (e.g. PLoS, J Biol Chem - with authors choice option and others), should put an end to stranglehold of the discredited 'journal impact factor' metric (see a critique by David Colquhoun, NATURE | VOL 423 | 29 MAY 2003 | pg 479). The misguided importance in academic circles, and by distinguished writers, evidently, of persisting with high impact factor journal is a historical baggage that we should all try to off load.