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Did Eugene Garfield Doom Academic Publishing with the Journal Impact Factor?

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Table of Contents

Introduction

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is arguably one of the most influential metrics in the history of academic publishing. Introduced by Eugene Garfield in the 1960s as a practical tool for librarians, it has since morphed into a behemoth that governs the careers of academics, the reputations of journals, and the decisions of universities and funding agencies worldwide. But as the cracks in the academic publishing system become increasingly visible, a provocative question emerges:

Did Garfield, with the best of intentions, set scholarly publishing on a path to dysfunction?

The article critically examines the origins, evolution, and consequences of the Journal Impact Factor and evaluates whether its influence has been more destructive than constructive. We’ll explore how Garfield’s invention has reshaped incentives, distorted research agendas, and entrenched inequities across the global academic ecosystem. And we’ll ask, with AI now rewriting the rules of publishing, is the JIF finally on its way out?

The Origins of the Journal Impact Factor

Eugene Garfield was a visionary—part bibliometricist, part information scientist. His work laid the foundations for citation indexing and the systematic analysis of scientific literature. The Journal Impact Factor was initially developed as a tool for librarians to decide which journals to subscribe to based on how often a journal’s articles were cited.

At the time, this made sense. Libraries faced budget constraints and needed a way to assess which journals were worth the cost. The JIF offered a way to rank journals by their average citation count, giving a sense of their influence or “impact” within the scientific community. It was part of a broader initiative to make the growing body of scientific literature more navigable and assessable.

Garfield created the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and published the Science Citation Index, which became the groundwork for modern citation databases. From this infrastructure, the Journal Impact Factor emerged as a statistical measure calculated by dividing the number of current-year citations to articles published in the previous two years by the total number of articles published in those two years.

But Garfield was not blind to the dangers of misusing the metric. He cautioned against conflating the impact of a journal with the quality of individual articles. Still, what was intended as a librarian’s heuristic quickly became something else entirely—something much larger and more problematic.

From Metric to Status Symbol

By the 1980s and 1990s, the JIF had evolved into something far beyond its original purpose. University administrators, tenure committees, and grant agencies began using it as a proxy for research quality. Publish in a high-impact journal, and your career prospects skyrocketed. Publish elsewhere, and you might be ignored, no matter how groundbreaking your research.

This shift had profound consequences. Instead of encouraging high-quality, innovative work, the system incentivized publishing in high-JIF journals at all costs. Researchers began tailoring their work to the preferences of top-tier journals, often favoring trendy topics, flashy results, or safe conclusions over risky but potentially transformative research.

The obsession with the JIF also led to the rise of the so-called impact factor arms race. Journals competed for the highest possible scores, and academics found themselves trapped in a cycle of publish-or-perish, often focused more on quantity and placement than substance. Career trajectories were increasingly tied not to what you wrote, but where it appeared.

In essence, the JIF became a form of academic currency, and like any currency, it distorted behavior. Once prestige was tied to a single number, the pursuit of genuine discovery was often sidelined in favor of citation accumulation.

Gaming the System

With great power comes… manipulation. As the JIF became central to reputational and financial rewards, editors and publishers found ways to game the system.

Some journals engaged in citation stacking, encouraging authors to cite articles from the same journal to inflate its JIF. Others increased the number of review articles—typically more frequently cited than original research—to boost their average citation count. These practices have become widespread, prompting watchdogs and reformers to call for greater transparency in how journals manage citations.

Publishers also began strategically timing articles’ publication to maximize citation windows. And let’s not forget the proliferation of special issues designed to garner citations quickly. Some editorial boards even orchestrated citation networks with other journals, forming what’s known as citation cartels.

The use of impact factors as a badge of prestige has also led to cases of editorial coercion, where reviewers or editors pressure authors to cite specific works from the same journal or related journals. This type of manipulation erodes trust in the peer review system and introduces citation bias.

What began as a neutral metric was now a tool being actively exploited for prestige and profit. In this context, the impact factor ceased to be a measure of quality and instead became a mechanism for reputation laundering.

The Prestige Trap

The obsession with the JIF has led to a pernicious cycle:

  1. High-impact journals receive more submissions.
  2. They can afford to be more selective.
  3. This selectivity increases their prestige and, ironically, their JIF.

The result? A self-reinforcing prestige loop. Meanwhile, authors whose work falls outside the mold—be it interdisciplinary, regional, or exploratory—find it harder to break into top-tier journals. The JIF, far from being a level playing field, became an arbiter of elitism.

The impact is especially harsh on researchers in less developed countries. Lacking the resources or networks to access top journals, they are often excluded from the prestige economy. Their work may be just as valid, but it struggles to gain traction without the JIF seal of approval.

This prestige loop also means that important but less-cited fields—such as taxonomy, niche theoretical work, or negative results—are pushed to the periphery. The JIF doesn’t value them highly, so neither do institutions, journals, or hiring committees. This marginalization contributes to a homogeneity of research and discourages the kind of intellectual diversity that drives scientific progress.

Misapplied Metrics and Bad Science

The most damaging consequence of JIF-centrism may be its effect on scientific integrity and the proliferation of toxic metrics. The pressure to publish in high-impact journals can lead to:

  • P-hacking: Manipulating statistical analyses to produce significant results.
  • Salami slicing: Splitting one study into multiple papers to inflate output.
  • Publication bias: Favoring positive results over null or negative findings.

In some cases, this leads to outright fraud. High-profile retractions often come from high-impact journals, suggesting that prestige doesn’t always correlate with rigor. The replication crisis in fields like psychology and biomedical sciences partly results from the prestige-based publishing system prioritizing flash over substance.

Moreover, junior researchers, desperate to secure positions, grants, and recognition, are particularly vulnerable to these pressures. The result is a research culture that rewards short-term gains, high visibility over long-term inquiry, and slow, methodical science.

Garfield’s Regrets

In his later years, Garfield acknowledged the problematic uses of the JIF. He reiterated that it was never intended to evaluate individual researchers or to dictate academic worth. In fact, he advocated for using multiple metrics and qualitative assessments to evaluate research.

In interviews and op-eds, Garfield expressed concern about the overreliance on his metric, emphasizing that it was being weaponized in ways he never imagined. He encouraged institutions to adopt holistic evaluation frameworks and to return to the core mission of science: curiosity-driven discovery.

Yet by then, the damage was done. The JIF had become embedded in the very structure of academic evaluation. It had gone from a niche tool to a cultural norm—one that defined entire careers and shaped the research agenda of entire disciplines.

The Rise of Alternatives (and Still No Solution)

In response to JIF fatigue, a slew of alternative metrics emerged:

  • Altmetrics: Track online mentions, downloads, and social media shares.
  • Eigenfactor: Weighs citations based on the influence of the citing journal.
  • h-index: Measures productivity and citation impact of individual researchers.

And then there are preprint servers like arXiv and bioRxiv, which bypass traditional journals altogether.

Some institutions have also signed on to initiatives like DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment), which explicitly rejects the use of journal-based metrics in hiring, promotion, and funding decisions.

Yet none of these alternatives has dethroned the JIF. Why? Academia remains addicted to prestige, and the JIF remains its most recognizable badge. Human psychology plays a role, too: it’s far easier to rely on a single number than to evaluate the nuanced and often messy reality of research quality.

Enter AI: The Great Disruptor

Artificial intelligence might be the only force powerful enough to break the JIF’s hold. AI tools can now:

  • Assess an entire body of work, rather than just where it was published.
  • Predict citation patterns based on content analysis, not journal brand.
  • Detect manipulated metrics and identify citation cartels.
  • Flag retracted or questionable studies in real time.

More importantly, AI can enable post-publication review systems in which articles are judged on their actual merit over time, not on the reputation of the venue in which they first appeared. Platforms like PubPeer and Scite are already experimenting with these models.

Imagine a system where an AI curates high-quality research from across the web, flags novel findings, and connects them to relevant audiences, regardless of JIF. That future is closer than we think—and it might just spell the end of the JIF era. We may even see AI create a dynamic, context-sensitive evaluation system that integrates multiple dimensions of impact—scientific, societal, and educational.

Conclusion: Was Garfield to Blame?

So, did Eugene Garfield destroy academic publishing?

No—but he did arm it with a dangerously seductive tool.

Garfield built the JIF to help librarians. Academia turned it into a weapon of prestige, and publishers weaponized it for profits. In the process, we all lost sight of what truly matters: the quality, rigor, and impact of the research itself.

But perhaps it’s not too late. With growing awareness, new technologies, and a cultural shift away from metrics-as-destiny, we may yet reclaim the soul of academic publishing. Reform efforts must focus on transparency, diversity of evaluation methods, and the encouragement of research that prioritizes depth and societal relevance over mere visibility.

If we do, Garfield’s legacy will be that of a pioneer—flawed, yes, but foundational.

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