ArticleeLife2019
Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations.
Article in eLife, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 83 papers.
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
83 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evaluation of methodology, reporting and transparency of 50 highly cited randomised trials in neurology: a cross-sectional analysis.BMJ open · 2026Article
- Reproducibility in biomedical research.Nature medicine · 2026Review
- How contemporary academic structures constrain scientific creativity and hold back early-career researchers.Nature human behaviour · 2026Review
- Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals.Science advances · 2026Article
- Highlighting Rigor, Reproducibility, and Transparency of Research in an Academic CV.Clinical and translational science · 2026Article
- Gender shapes the relationship between productivity and journal prestige in science.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The publish or perish, publish and perish, publish then perish, and now retract and perish cultures in academia.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Amplifying signal-to-noise: Responsible use of large language models in radiology publishing.Clinical imaging · 2026Article
- A survey of how biology researchers assess credibility when serving on grant and hiring committees.PeerJ · 2026Article
- Resilience and Recalibration of Bibliometric Indicators in Neurosciences and Neuropharmacology Journals After COVID-19: A Longitudinal Rate of Change Analysis Using Mixed-Effects Models.Current neuropharmacology · 2026Article
- Rethinking team science metrics through Collaborative Guideposts.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Most researchers would receive more recognition if assessed by article-level metrics than by journal-level metrics.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Ending publication bias: A values-based approach to surface null and negative results.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Geographical diversity of peer reviewers shapes author success.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Role of low-impact-factor journals in conservation implementation.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Article
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- Evaluation and Comparison of the Academic Quality of Open-Access Mega Journals and Authoritative Journals: Disruptive Innovation Evaluation.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
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- Academic influencers: Clinical and Translational Science scholars and trainees at the intersection of influential scholarship and public attention.Journal of clinical and translational science · 2025Article
- Article
23 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We analyzed how often and in what ways the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is currently used in review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) documents of a representative sample of universities from the United States and Canada. 40% of research-intensive institutions and 18% of master's institutions mentioned the JIF, or closely related terms. Of the institutions that mentioned the JIF, 87% supported its use in at least one of their RPT documents, 13% expressed caution about its use, and none heavily criticized it or prohibited its use. Furthermore, 63% of institutions that mentioned the JIF associated the metric with quality, 40% with impact, importance, or significance, and 20% with prestige, reputation, or status. We conclude that use of the JIF is encouraged in RPT evaluations, especially at research-intensive universities, and that there is work to be done to avoid the potential misuse of metrics like the JIF.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.