ArticlePloS one2017
Science deserves to be judged by its contents, not by its wrapping: Revisiting Seglen's work on journal impact and research evaluation.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Article
- Beyond impact factor: citation skew and article-level influence in sleep medicine journals.Sleep & breathing = Schlaf & Atmung · 2026Article
- Estimating scientific coherence using population-level indicators and research production data: a longitudinal analytical proof-of-concept study.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2026Article
- A Scientometric Analysis of Africa's Health Science Journals Indexed in International and Regional Databases: A Comparative Analysis.International journal of public health · 2023Article
- Faculty appointment and promotion in Taiwan's medical schools, a systematic analysis.BMC medical education · 2022Article
- Use of the journal impact factor for assessing individual articles: Statistically flawed or not?F1000Research · 2020Article
- Beyond Citations: Assessing the Online Impact ofJournal of Indian Association of Pediatric SurgeonsArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The scientific foundation for the criticism on the use of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in evaluations of individual researchers and their publications was laid between 1989 and 1997 in a series of articles by Per O. Seglen. His basic work has since influenced initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Leiden Manifesto for research metrics, and The Metric Tide review on the role of metrics in research assessment and management. Seglen studied the publications of only 16 senior biomedical scientists. We investigate whether Seglen's main findings still hold when using the same methods for a much larger group of Norwegian biomedical scientists with more than 18,000 publications. Our results support and add new insights to Seglen's basic work.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.