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http://francesscientist.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/impact-factor-who-are-you-bullshittingImpact factor is a crutch that is most often used by impotent, unimaginative and incompetent committees in the academic institutions for recruitment, promotions, and fiscal matters. Notice that I showered the adjectives on committees, not the members of the committees, who are generally intelligent people (including me).  Overworked, unappreciated, and sometimes lazy and indifferent members of a committee do not want to be held responsible for making a decision.  Therefore, they rely on impact factor to show their ‘objectivity’.  If they hire a new faculty member who later turns out to be a complete jerk in the department, they can easily blame it on the impact factor of his publication which led to his recruitment.  Had they selected him on the basis of their ‘judgement’, they would be scoffed at by their peers and colleagues.So, once you begin to equate impact factor as being objective index of productivity, smartness, intelligence, and innovation, you have unleashed a monster that is going to take over the part of the system that traditionally relied on competing interests.  Grant reviewers and paper reviewers can now exercise more arbitrary control over the decision-making without appearing to be unfair.  They can veto the impact factor invoking their experience and judgement.  Essentially, the reviewers are manipulating the system in their favor.One may argue that eventually, the system will be ‘normalized’ so that no one will be clearly at an undue advantage.  The truth is that it is the same old bullshit with the added objectivity armor of the impact factor.In case you wondered how some journals achieve high impact factor, it is quite revealing to notice that the Annual Reviews series have some of the highest impact factor.  Wow!!  You would have thought that the real research papers should be the winners.  Apparently not!  And there lies the trick.  Most high impact journals are highly cited not because of their published research papers but because of the review articles.  It is not their altruism that glitzy journals are happy to let you download the artistic slides for your PowerPoint presentations.Although it is a great business plan to target the lazy scientists who don’t want to do their own legwork of literature review, there is another reason for using review articles to boost impact factor. Many shrewd scientists like to cite the reviews published in the high impact factor journals in their grant proposals and research papers upfront.  This way the lazy reviewer can be convinced that because the topic was reviewed in a high impact journal, it must be of great importance.When I was a new postdoc, I learnt a valuable lesson in assessing the scientific caliber of a scientist.  My research advisor was a soft-spoken, astute scientist with an incisive vision. He showed me how he judged the quality and productivity of a faculty candidate from his Curriculum vitae.1.  Throw out all the reviews, he (or she) has listed.2.  Take away all the papers where authorship is beyond the second author (or senior author).3.  Trash all the conferences and posters presented.4.  Look at how regularly the papers have been published and how good they are.  Yes, use your judgement.  A good paper does not need any assistance, you will know when you see it (at least in the area of research close to you).I think I agree with his style of assessment rather than the bullshit of impact factor.  Won’t you agree?