This is just pathetic and sad
December 16, 2010
I happened to be on a journal’s website trying to download a paper just recently when I noticed the following prominent icon.
C’mon now. Why bother? 2.8 is perfectly respectable, I’m not capping on that. But you’d think they’d have some logic in there to forgo the bragging icon if the change was less than, say, a full point.
DrugMonkey 
December 16, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Dude, what the fucke are you even doing on the Web site of some shittebagge bottom-feeder journal that no one fucken reads?
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December 16, 2010 at 4:51 pm
HA! Too funny!
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December 16, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Very funny, CPP.
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December 16, 2010 at 5:30 pm
The lack of self-awareness is sort of startling. It’s like wait, we were crap, but now we’re still crap. Zing!
But Seriously : @Comrade PhysioProf there are some really awesome journals with impact factors >3. Unless that was a joke.. I hope..
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December 16, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Maybe it’s like a stock ticker: look at all the changes at the end of the month.
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December 16, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Ahahahahahahhahhh! That made me laugh really hard.
And I am going to make my journal club read a paper from a journal with an impact factor of just about that. Since I am new to all this, I have no idea whether this will offend them or not. (I am not worried about it, though.)
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December 16, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Juniper, don’t fall for the Impact Factor lie. If you are really concerned, ask your PI casually about it, s/he can give you a calibration for the subfield.
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December 16, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Given teh inflation of impact factors that seems to go on, this could mean that the journal is getting worse (as judged by impact factors).
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December 16, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Pure mathematics journal are all below 2.oo IF. On the other hand, we are off the scale as far as halflife goes :-).
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December 17, 2010 at 3:59 am
Just another example of how impact factors are taken far too seriously.
“I was not even considering submitting to X Journal @ IF 2.828, but when I saw that the IF had risen to 2.890- Holy shit!!11!! I am totes submitting there now.”
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December 17, 2010 at 5:15 am
Hmmm….looks like you’ve found a journal where we wouldn’t have to provide statistics for our data
/snark
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December 17, 2010 at 5:56 am
I have to admit to being very happy that I have no idea what is a “good” impact factor and what is a “bad” impact factor.
I know the handful of journals in my field that are considered the “real” ones. I know that some people think that there is a “worthiness ranking” to them, and I also know that that is BS. And I know that people have this idea that it’s all good to be published in “Nature”, and that administrations love it, but also that that attitude is evidence of severe widespread rectal defilade. (I have rants about why it’s a net negative to publish in “Nature”….)
I don’t need yet another gratuitous oversimplified single-parameter numbered ranking in my life to turn everything into a meaningless dick-measuring contest.
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December 17, 2010 at 6:05 am
Hey they worked hard for the 0.062 IF points.
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December 17, 2010 at 6:30 am
Meh.
It’s probably just an automated module/ticker
Wouldn’t read a whole lot into that.
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December 17, 2010 at 6:35 am
Ok, ok, now that we’ve all had our fun….. I’m with DaveR, actually. It was a journal hosted at an extremely large publishing house and my assumption is that this is their default, and possibly automated, policy across all of their journals. Although now I suppose I’m off to see if any of their titles have decreased in impact factor…
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December 17, 2010 at 7:45 am
You’d think they could at least say their impact factor went from 2.8 to 2.9. The 1/10 place is already barely significant, but showing two more decimals really is pathetic.
What’s amazing about this is how few papers are necessary to cause such a shift. Lets say this journal publishes 240 articles over a 2 year cycle. That’s 679 citations under their old impact and 694 citations with the new impact. A single, article that got cited 18 times could have caused this shift.
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December 19, 2010 at 11:33 am
I just got a paper accepted in a journal with IF 3.059! I totes PWNED your shitte paper by a whole 0.169 points, DM!
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December 19, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I don’t believe them. I would if they could provide their IF to four deimal places though.
The more precise you pretend you are the more sciency you look.
-antipodean
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December 23, 2010 at 8:26 am
Estraven is right. Most great Mathematics, Engineering, Computing journals that publish papers equivalent to Cell-type papers rank somewhere around 3. Just that most papers in these journals are too specific to a field of research and it takes time for anyone to publish in these journals. So, can’t compare across fields. I have seen many medical journals that publish (from a Mathematics, Engineering, Computing stand-point) much weaker papers but with a higher impact factor.
Crap, I forgot my punch-line and what I wanted to say.
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December 23, 2010 at 8:28 am
Just a strange thing, why does my icon across my name in these posts looks like a dick-head (better than Estraven’s which is kind of saggy, ha ha)
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February 3, 2013 at 12:17 pm
We can argue all we want about the maths, etc. What boggles the mind is the kind of brain that would allow or put a notice of an IF increase in 0.06. If that brain is a reflection of the IP people’s brains, then it is sadder than I thought. And the administrators lap it up when they decide on journals or on researchers’ worth or on hiring or on promotion; what is their brain like? It is dangerous stuff. Seems like Kafka is having another laugh.
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February 3, 2013 at 1:24 pm
Looks like an automated flag put on all the publisher’s journals that increased in IF at all.
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