Chronicle of Higher Ed. on ISI impact factors

A free article in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education discusses the uses and mis-uses of the ISI Journal Impact Factor.

From the article:

Impact ranking may now be a tool that controls scientists, rather than the other way around. Pressure to publish in the highest-impact science journals — Nature, Science, and Cell — has led researchers to compete more and more for the limited number of slots in those broader journals, thus diminishing the specialty titles that have traditionally served as the main publications of each discipline. Academe used to be a "publish or perish" world, but now the halls of science have turned into a "publish in a high-impact journal or perish" environment, says [University of] Massachusetts [Worcester]'s Mr. [Yu-Li] Wang.

Incidentally, the UMass Libraries can help you locate the impact factor for a given journal. The most recent data we have is for 2004. Contact us for more info.