Problems and Perspectives in Management, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.18(1).2020.05 Abstract Universities and funders in many countries have been using Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as an indicator for research and grant assessment despite its controversial nature as a statistical representation of scientific quality. This study investigates how the changes of JIF over the years can affect its role in research evaluation and science management by using JIF data from annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to illustrate the changes. The descriptive statistics find out an increase in the median JIF for the top 50 journals in the JCR, from 29.300 in 2017 to 33.162 in 2019. Moreover, on average, elite journal families have up to 27 journals in the top 50. In the group of journals with a JIF of lower than 1, the proportion has shrunk by 14.53% in the 2015–2019 period. The findings suggest a potential 'JIF bubble period' that science policymaker, university, public fund managers, and other stakeholders should pay more attention to JIF as a criterion for quality assessment to ensure more efficient science management. Trung Tran (Vietnam), Khanh-Linh Hoang (Vietnam), Viet-Phuong La (Vietnam), Manh-Toan Ho (Vietnam), Quan-Hoang Vuong (Vietnam) Scrambling for higher metrics in the Journal Impact Factor bubble period: a real-world problem in science management and its implications Received on: 20th of October, 2019 Accepted on: 20th of January, 2020 INTRODUCTION Over the past few years, academia has debated about the use (and misuse) of journal metrics in evaluating scientific quality with many criticisms directed toward the most widely used Journal Impact Factor (JIF) provided by Web of Science. In the beginning, citation index was conceived by Eugene Garfield as a tool to help the academic community track notes and references to earlier works (Garfield, 1955); and only later that he suggested "frequency and impact of citations" can potentially be used to assess journals as well (Garfield, 1972). Science Citation Index (SCI) and Journal Impact Factor (JIF) had gradually become useful tools for librarians, editors, and policymakers to evaluate important journals in the fields and identify a potential rise of a research topic (McKiernan, Schimanski, Muñoz Nieves, Matthias, Niles, & Alperin, 2019). However, managers at universities, research institutions, and science funding agencies have been using JIF as an important criterion for evaluation in many aspects including research quality (Moustafa, 2015), career promotion and grant application (McKiernan et al., 2019), prediction of scientific impact (Berenbaum, 2019), or even distribution of funding (Moustafa, 2015). As a conse- © Trung Tran, Khanh-Linh Hoang, Viet-Phuong La, Manh-Toan Ho, Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2020 Trung Tran, Ph.D., Vietnam Academy for Ethnic Minorities, Hanoi, Vietnam. Khanh-Linh Hoang, M.A., Institute of Theoretical and Applied Research (ITAR), Duy Tan University, Hanoi, Vietnam. Viet-Phuong La, Researcher, Center for Interdisciplinary Social Research, Phenikaa University, Yen Nghia, Ha Dong District, Hanoi, Vietnam. Manh-Toan Ho, M.A., Center for Interdisciplinary Social Research, Phenikaa University, Yen Nghia, Ha Dong District, Hanoi, Vietnam. Quan-Hoang Vuong, Ph.D., Research Director, Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research, Phenikaa University, Hanoi, Vietnam. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. www.businessperspectives.org LLC "СPС "Business Perspectives" Hryhorii Skovoroda lane, 10, Sumy, 40022, Ukraine BUSINESS PERSPECTIVES JEL Classification I23, O32, O38 Keywords Journal Impact Factor, Journal Citation Reports, education and science policy, publishing incentives, R&D management, research institutions 49 Problems and Perspectives in Management, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.18(1).2020.05 quence, the management of science funding and policies has been skewed based on this misuse, affecting different fields in unequal measures. For many years now, despite the criticisms, the second half of June has always been considered "the Journal Impact Factor (JIF or IF) season." Even though JIF has become a proxy for many aspects of scientific research, it is still a calculation of citations that can tell us something about the world of science. Based on this train of thought, the authors hope to make the numbers to tell their stories through descriptive analysis. Thus, the article aims to provide a data-driven understanding of the use of JIF in science management policy. In the following section, the relevant literature in the field is going to be discussed. 1. LITERATURE REVIEW Since the concept of JIF was for sorting journals in the library, the metrics have many shortcomings that make it insufficient in reflecting the quality of a journal or a researcher. As a statistical measure, changes in the field, time of citation count, journal's type and size affected the JIF significantly, thus, making an out-of-context usage impossible and misleading (Amin & Mabe, 2000). Moreover, the editors of a journal can manipulate JIF by asking under review manuscript to cite papers from the journal, or publishing a review of the previous articles in the journal frequently (Arnold & Fowler, 2011). Recently, Larivière and Sugimoto (2019) summed up most of the JIF flaws in their chapter. Firstly, the citation count for news, editorials, obituaries, articles is inflating the citation of many journals. Moreover, the standard two-year period seems to be arbitrary, thus, putting at a disadvantage the fields that require a long time to accumulate citation. Generally, differences among fields make the comparison harder. The significant effect of a few highly cited papers also muddles the citation count. Finally, the drastic rise of impact factor in recent years appears to be inflation. Scientists, university leaders, and policymakers have been fighting the usage of JIF as an indicator of quality, and the Declaration on Research Assessments or DORA (https://sfdora.org/) is a notable initiative. DORA emphasizes on the need to stop using JIF as a proxy for quality, to change the current research evaluation methods (DORA). The plan to achieve these goals includes the development and promotion of alternative methods, new tools, and the process of research evaluation and extending the impact of DORA (June 27, 2017). However, Tregoning (2018) asks an important question that remains unanswered: If not JIF, then what Tregoning views JIF as a quick, immediate, and easy-to-understand method to grasp the essence of a person's work, especially for early-career researchers. In a career that celebrates longevity and seniority, using the number of publications, citations, or h-index, which can only accumulate in time, is rather unfair to young researchers. A recent study in bioRxiv also suggests that tenured and senior academics value journal prestige and metrics less than their younger and untenured counterparts (Niles, Schimanski, McKiernan, & Alperin, 2019). It is hard to ignore the fact that even though higher ranking might not mean quality, it does bring the reputation to the journal and attract readers (Langin, 2019). Moreover, the introduction of journal ranking and JIF in the research evaluation did help to improve the overall productivity of scientists (Bornmann, 2011; Götz, 2019). Thus, the academic community still assesses the quality of an individual paper or a scientist based on the impact factor. Firstly, as Tregoning (2018) suggests, besides the number of citations, JIF is still one of the most familiar qualitative indicators that can show a journal's achievement. Moreover, comparing to article-level citation counts, JIF attracts users because they are quicker to obtain. Finally, JIF has established a clear indicator of the invisible hierarchy of academic journals (Bordons, Fernández, & Gómez, 2002). These advantages lead to JIF being widely used in evaluating research quality (Moustafa, 2015), ca50 Problems and Perspectives in Management, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.18(1).2020.05 reer promotion, and grant application (McKiernan et al., 2019), prediction of scientific impact (Berenbaum, 2019), or even distribution of funding (Moustafa, 2015). For instance, a paper studying over 860 review, promotion, and tenure documents from universities in the United States and Canada finds that 40% of doctoral, research-oriented institutions include JIF in their documents (McKiernan et al., 2019). Moreover, the study also suggests 60% of the institutions equated JIF with quality, while 40% mentioned it with impact, and 20% suggested reputation and prestige in close relation with JIF (McKiernan et al., 2019). In Spain, JIF and citations are important criteria to review a scientist's performance because they provide objective indicators to help the board of experts (Bordons, Fernández, & Gómez, 2002). Being tangible and measurable in a short time also makes impact factor an important research output indicator, along with citation in policy documents, debates, media (Mabiso, Rheenen, & Ferguson, 2013). In some countries, university managers and science funders are using JIF as a basis for providing a cash bonus. In China, a paper published in top journals such as Cell, Science, or Nature was paid an RMB 500,000 cash bonus (Nature Editoral, 2017). Similarly, in Vietnam, an ISI/Scopus article can be worth up to USD 2,000, while a publication in a journal that has a JIF higher than two can earn the author a sum of USD 8,600 (Vuong, 2019b). Even though this practice can exacerbate fieldbased inequality and, by extension, other structural discrimination, skew the perception of success in academia and complicate science management, JIF continues to be one of the decisive elements in research careers. Brown (2007) suggests medical schools in the UK have lost many faculty members to impact factor because clinical researchers cannot compete with their laboratory-based counterparts in terms of journal ranking. Meanwhile, in Japan, domestic researchers find it harder to cooperate internationally if the outcomes are in low impact journals (Shibayama & Baba, 2015). Osterloh and Frey (2020) argue that most of the authors who got their papers accepted eventually benefit from the JIF, which leads to more effort in keeping the JIF. In this article, based on a comparative view of changes in JIFs over the past five years, the authors will discuss how this technical aspect of JIF will affect the way universities and science funding agencies use it as a tool for science management. 2. METHODS The subsequent descriptive analysis employs two types of data: a) JIFs provided by yearly Journal Citations Reports (JCR) from Clarivate Analytics; b) Counts of journals in the predefined JIF ranges. The first type of data is readily understandable as each journal that has an Impact Factor is given the figure in the JCR. For instance, the 2019 JCR shows that the top-tiered general Science Magazine (https://sciencemag.org) has its 2018 IF standing at 41.037. In theory, JIF is computed by dividing the number of citations to the articles that a journal has in a year by the number of total articles that the journal has in the two preceding years. For instance, the 2019 JIF of a journal can be computed as follows (Garfield, 1994): A = Total number of citations received in 2019. B = 2019 citations to the articles published in 2017–2018. C = Total number of publications in 2017–2018. D = B/C = 2019 Journal Impact Factor. The second type is a little less straightforward. Data of this type are count data from some predefined ranges, which one would like to observe the "behaviors" of the corresponding data. For instance, if one wishes to know whether it is true that very few journals can attain a two-digit JIF, a JIF range with a starting value of 10. In principle, one can choose arbitrary intervals of JIF. But in practice, only certain intervals are meaningful for our audiences. The process of collecting these data involves scanning both paper-based and pdf reports, cleaning up duplicates, and correcting for easy-to-misunderstand abbreviations of journal titles. These tasks have been performed with the help of our home-grown AI tools for detecting probable du51 Problems and Perspectives in Management, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.18(1).2020.05 plicates and recognizing/suggesting titles using fuzzy strings. The clean data were then saved into the CSV format, and SQL Server 2016 (Microsoft®, Seattle, WA, USA) was used to perform descriptive statistics. An example of the SQL code is shown on the Figure 1. 3. RESULTS The authors start with Table 1, providing lists of top 50 among those 'elite journals' over the recent three years, using data from JCR 2017–2019. It is noteworthy that those most famous journals such as Nature (highlight in yellow) and Science (highlight in green) do not have the highest JIF, nor do their JIF always increase over time. The Editorin-Chief of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – May R. Berenbaum – noted this interesting phenomenon when she moved from the Annual Review of Entomology to PNAS in 2017 (Berenbaum, 2019). Even though PNAS is considered more prestigious, its actual JIF (2017 JIF = 9.661) is lower than the Annual Review of Entomology (2017 JIF = 12.867). In Table 1, it is notable that PNAS is not in the top 50. It is also clear that an increase in JIF for a particular journal does not guarantee their higher position because some other journals may show bigger jumps. Nonetheless, all the journals in this group have their JIF of higher than 20, with CA-Cancer J Clin being an exception. The median JIF for this top 50 appears to have increased over time from 29.300 in 2017 (Living Rev Relativ) to 21.398 in 2018 (31.398), and 33.162 in 2019 (Nat Rev Neurosci). For positions from 41 to 50 of Table 1, all show an increase in JIF over time too. Having considered a longer period, 2015–2019, the changes look more interesting. On average, about 7 journals are replaced by "new" ones each year. Specifically, 8 were replaced during 2015–2016. From 2016 to 2017, 6 were dropped from the previous list, but 3 in 2015 top list returned. During 2017–2018, 8 were dropped from the group, but 1 journal from the 2016 list came back. Finally, during 2018–2019, 8 were replaced by 7 new journals and 1 veteran. So, although there were shuffles among journals, the majority of this elite group has remained the same over time. Certain elite families also have numerous representatives on this list. For instance, the Nature family has, on average, 20 journals, the Cell Press family 3, and the Lancet family 4. Next, Figure 2 gives a feel of how journals are distributed against some major JIF ranges (indicated by the legends inside the chart), using JCR 2019 data. It is not a surprise that the journals with a JIF of 10 or higher constitute the smallest group among all groups (2.19% of the JCR 2019 population). The next group (5 ≤ JIF < 10) accounts for a little less than 6% of the population. That being said, all the journals with a JIF of 5 or higher account for just 8.17% in JCR 2019. Journals, which have a JIF of lower than 2, account for a staggering majority of 57% all journals. Figure 2 uses only 6 JIF ranges for better visualization of the data. However, since we are also interested in the equal intervals (except for the highest, i.e., JIF ≥ 10), Table 2 provides such breakdowns for the recent five-year data. For instance, the authors read the line 5+, which counts the number of journals with a JIF of 5 or higher, together with the corresponding proportion (against the total number of journals present in a specific year of JCR). The number of journals increases from 617 (2015) to 969 (2019). Their proportion also increases from 5.59% (2015) to 8.17% (2019). Figure 1. An example of the SQL code WITH CTE AS ( SELECT *,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY name_en ORDER BY name_en) AS RN FROM [datJIF] WHERE [year]=2010 ) UPDATE CTE SET StatusId=1 WHERE RN<>1 52 Problems and Perspectives in Management, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.18(1).2020.05 Table 1. Top 50 journals by JIF, JCR 2017–2019 Journal 2017 Journal 2018 Journal 2019 CA-Cancer J Clin 187.040 CA-Cancer J Clin 244.585 CA-Cancer J Clin 223.679 N Engl J Med 72.406 N Engl J Med 79.258 Nat Rev Mater 74.449 Nat Rev Drug Discov 57.000 Lancet 53.254 N Engl J Med 70.670 Chem Rev 47.928 Chem Rev 52.613 Lancet 59.102 Lancet 47.831 Nat Rev Mater 51.941 Nat Rev Drug Discov 57.618 Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 46.602 Nat Rev Drug Discov 50.167 Chem Rev 54.301 JAMA 44.405 JAMA 47.661 Nat Energy 54.000 Nat Biotechnol 41.667 Nat Energy 46.859 Nat Rev Cancer 51.848 Nat Rev Genet 40.282 Nat Rev Cancer 42.784 JAMA 51.273 Nature 40.137 Nat Rev Immunol 41.982 Nat Rev Immunol 44.019 Nat Rev Immunol 39.932 Nature 41.577 Nat Rev Genet 43.704 Nat Mater 39.737 Nat Rev Genet 41.465 Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 43.351 Nat Nanotechnol 38.986 Science 41.058 Nature 43.070 Chem Soc Rev 38.618 Chem Soc Rev 40.182 Science 41.037 Nat Photonics 37.852 Nat Mater 39.235 Chem Soc Rev 40.443 Science 37.205 Nat Nanotechnol 37.490 Nat Mater 38.887 Nat Rev Cancer 37.147 Lancet Oncol 36.418 Rev Mod Phys 38.296 Rev Mod Phys 36.917 Rev Mod Phys 36.367 Cell 36.216 Lancet Oncol 33.900 Nat Biotechnol 35.724 Lancet Oncol 35.386 Prog Mater Sci 31.140 Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 35.612 Nat Rev Microbiol 34.648 Annu Rev Astron Astrophys 30.733 Nat Rev Neurosci 32.635 Nat Rev Clin Oncol 34.106 Cell 30.410 Nat Med 32.621 World Psychiatry 34.024 Nat Med 29.886 Nat Photonics 32.521 Nat Nanotechnol 33.407 Energ Environ Sci 29.518 Nat Rev Microbiol 31.851 Energ Environ Sci 33.250 Living Rev Relativ 29.300 Cell 31.398 Nat Rev Neurosci 33.162 Mater Sci Eng R Rep 29.280 Adv Phys 30.917 Annu Rev Astron Astrophys 33.069 Nat Rev Neurosci 28.880 Energ Environ Sci 30.067 Nat Rev Dis Primers 32.274 Annu Rev Immunol 28.396 World Psychiatry 30.000 Nat Biotechnol 31.864 Nat Genet 27.959 Lancet Neurol 27.138 Nat Photonics 31.583 Cancer Cell 27.407 Nat Genet 27.125 Nat Med 30.641 Physiol Rev 27.312 Nat Methods 26.919 Nat Rev Chem 30.628 Annu Rev Pathol Mech 26.853 Psychol Inq 26.364 Lancet Neurol 28.755 Nat Rev Microbiol 26.819 J Clin Oncol 26.303 Nat Methods 28.467 World Psychiatry 26.561 Nat Chem 26.201 Phys Rep 28.295 Lancet Neurol 26.284 Prog Energy Combust Sci 25.242 J Clin Oncol 28.245 Nat Chem 25.870 Lancet Infect Dis 25.148 Living Rev Relativ 27.778 Prog Polym Sci 25.766 Annu Rev Astron Astrophys 24.912 BMJ 27.604 Nat Methods 25.062 Nat Rev Clin Oncol 24.653 Lancet Infect Dis 27.516 J Clin Oncol 24.008 Prog Polym Sci 24.558 Annu Rev Biochem 26.922 Cell Stem Cell 23.394 Mater Today 24.537 Prog Energy Combust Sci 26.467 Immunity 22.845 Mater Sci Eng R Rep 24.480 Cancer Discov 26.370 Annu Rev Plant Biol 22.808 Cancer Discov 24.373 Adv Phys 26.100 Nat Phys 22.806 Physiol Rev 24.014 Adv Mater 25.809 Adv Phys 21.818 Prog Mater Sci 23.750 Nat Genet 25.455 Mater Today 21.695 Eur Heart J 23.425 Adv Energy Mater 24.884 Nat Immunol 21.506 Living Rev Relativ 23.333 Nat Rev Endocrinol 24.646 BMJ 20.785 Cell Stem Cell 23.290 Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol 24.540 Nat Rev Clin Oncol 20.693 BMJ 23.259 Prog Polym Sci 24.505 Acc Chem Res 20.268 Cancer Cell 22.844 Mater Today 24.372 Nat Rev Neurol 20.257 Annu Rev Psychol 22.774 Physiol Rev 24.250 53 Problems and Perspectives in Management, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.18(1).2020.05 It seems clear that the proportion of journals with a JIF of lower than 1.0 drops from 40.16% (2015) to 25.63% (2019). Therefore, one may suspect that we are living in a "JIF bubble period." While this type of inflation may look pleasing to the authors, for now, it would potentially lead to a decrease in the value of JIF in the long run. From another analytical angle, one may wish to learn the kind of JIF threshold for certain portions of journals, using the percentage of highest JIF journals. Table 3 is presented for that purpose. In Table 3, the lowest JIF for each group is listed as a kind of threshold. Let us take a look at two groups, the top 1% and 10% journals in the 2015– 2019 period. The threshold increases from 13.555 to 15.548 for the top 1%, and from 3.775 to 4.524 for the top 10%. All other groups experience certain degrees of increase, too. Figure 2. Distribution of JCR-covered journals for 2019 against JIF 2018 ranges 2,19% 5,98% 15,30% 19,49% 31,31% 25,73% 10+ 5-10 3-5 2-3 1-2 <1 Table 2. Cumulative numbers of journals against progressive JIF levels JIF 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 #J Prop. #J Prop. #J Prop. #J Prop. #J Prop. 10+ 178 1.61% 176 1.57% 201 1.75% 227 1.95% 260 2.19% 9+ 217 1.97% 212 1.89% 245 2.14% 277 2.38% 309 2.61% 8+ 258 2.34% 271 2.42% 304 2.65% 342 2.93% 380 3.21% 7+ 328 2.97% 341 3.05% 384 3.35% 432 3.71% 488 4.12% 6+ 434 3.93% 436 3.90% 527 4.60% 586 5.03% 678 5.72% 5+ 617 5.59% 641 5.73% 744 6.49% 838 7.19% 969 8.17% 4+ 960 8.70% 1,019 9.11% 1,201 10.48% 1,329 11.40% 1,546 13.04% 3+ 1,760 15.95% 1,832 16.37% 2,199 19.19% 2,453 21.05% 2,783 23.47% 2+ 3,416 30.96% 3,577 31.97% 4,152 36.23% 4,577 39.27% 5,094 42.97% 1+ 6,602 59.84% 6,947 62.09% 7,605 66.37% 8,250 70.79% 8,806 74.27% 0+ 11,033 100.00% 11,189 100.00% 11,459 100.00% 11,655 100.00% 11,856 100.00% Table 3. Numbers of journals and JIF thresholds for top groups and Q1/Q2/Q3 groups Top 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 #Journals Min JIF #Journals Min JIF #Journals Min JIF #Journals Min JIF #Journals Min JIF 1% 111 13.555 112 13.118 115 13.678 117 14.385 119 15.548 2% 221 8.802 224 8.784 230 9.361 234 9.655 238 10.556 5% 552 5.331 560 5.336 573 5.727 583 6.012 593 6.361 10% 1,104 3.775 1,119 3.847 1,146 4.072 1,166 4.27 1,186 4.524 Q1 2,759 2.331 2,798 2.355 2,865 2.581 2,914 2.718 2,964 2.883 Q2 5,517 1.273 5,595 1.328 5,730 1.468 5,828 1.602 5,928 1.736 Q3 8,275 0.654 8,392 0.692 8,595 0.776 8,742 0.875 8,892 0.975 54 Problems and Perspectives in Management, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.18(1).2020.05 The increasing thresholds across all groups of journals also provide a bit more support to the "JIF bubble" suspicion. Figure 2 presents growth rates in numbers of journals in different JIF groups, with each group representing a specific JIF range. Similar to Figure 2, Figure 3 also uses 6 JIF ranges as described by its legends. 4. DISCUSSION The analysis suggests a potential "JIF bubble period," to which stakeholders in the science community should pay attention. The median JIF for the top 50 journals has increased from 29.300 in 2017 to 33.162 in 2019. The presence of elite journal families is also notable, as Nature family has 20 journals in the top 50 highest JIF journals on average. Considering some major JIF ranges, journals with a JIF of 5 or higher occupy only 8.17% in 2019 JCR, while those with a JIF of lower than two account for about 57% of all. There is a significant drop in the proportion of journals with a JIF of lower than one from 40.16% in 2015 to only 25.63% in 2019. Moreover, the threshold for identifying the top percentage of journals also increases over the year. It should also be noted that since November 2014, the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) has become part of the WOS core collection, focusing on growing journals. With more than 8,000 ESCI journals having been included for impact factor calculation, the "JIF bubble period" could also be a product of this expansion. However, unlike a bubble in the financial market, which is that eventually causing a market crash (Sornette & Cauwels, 2015), the JIF bubble period is more likely to continue. Currently, as the academic world is under the pressure of 'publish or perish' (Editoral, 2015; Vuong, 2019a), this 'JIF bubble period' seems to benefit the elite group, and those with a JIF of 4.52 or higher, due largely to the supply-demand imbalances. There are two major implications, which science policymakers and publishers/editors will have little choice but to ponder heavily. First, this type of "Matthew's law" in attaining higher JIF and generating a higher demand will not end in any foreseeable horizon. Our findings have suggested an increase from 617 to 969 journals in the 2015–2019 period for journals with a JIF of 5 or higher, and this trend also happens in other JIF ranges as well. It looks like the "JIF bubble period" will further expand. When the authors would put more effort into keeping the high JIF because they find it helpful in advancing their career in the organization (Osterloh & Frey, 2020), they enjoy the "JIF bubble period." As the financial bubble is often "driven by sentiment and no longer reflects any real underlying value" (Sornette & Cauwels, 2015), JIF, which has been controversial since the beginning, would not be less controversial in the current "JIF bubble period." Therefore, reliance on JIF to promote or award science in China or Vietnam universities is gradually becoming an unstable method (Nature Editoral, 2017; Vuong, 2019b), which could adversely affect the ethical management of scientific funds. Universities and research institutions should use different methods and metrics to evaluate science. Figure 3. Growth rates of JIF groups, 2015–2019 -20% -10% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 >=10 5-10 3-5 2-3 1-2 <1 55 Problems and Perspectives in Management, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.18(1).2020.05 Second, the heated race will render many more debates, and criticisms on abuse of JIF, only to lack in both relevance and impact as voices from journal representatives mostly come from those who have been enjoying the privilege of being already in the elite group. These paradoxes are unsolvable and will remain unsolvable for quite some time. Sumpter (2019) shares a similar concern since most of the current metrics such as citation, JIF, or h-index - following Hirsch (2005) - are in favor of senior scientists. While evaluating, the early-career researchers will have to wait for more research data to come. Rather than criticizing the JIF, the senior scientists, especially those who are in managerial positions, should focus on creating a fairer guideline and policy, or finding an alternative method of evaluation. Otherwise, just as the elite families of scientific journals have consistently presented in the list of journals with high JIF (see Table 1), those who benefit from JIF will continue to enjoy the comfort, while others struggle to climb the rank – an act that would only further fortify the abuse of this one metric as a criterion for academic prestige. CONCLUSION The article has analyzed the yearly JIFs from Clarivate Analytics' Journal Citations Reports and counts of journals in certain JIF ranges. Notably, the results have shown signs of a "JIF bubble period," which can be found in the rise of the median JIF from 2017 to 2019, or the increase of the JIF limit for categorizing the top percentage of journals. The situation should not be taken lightly by university governing body and science policymaker since science will, in the long run, no longer be the place for the type of "soul-touching research" that humanity has been longing for (Trinh et al, 2019). The academic scene will instead be dominated by the stonecold performance metrics, of which JIF can be the single most intimidating representative (Neuberger, & Counsell, 2002). Policymakers in science management would benefit from more sensible considerations regarding the disproportionate use of a singular metric – the JIF – in the multi-faceted task of evaluating the research careers and scientific credentials (Snoek, 2019). 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