The reliance on proxies such as Impact Factor, H-index and journal names is damaging to the academic culture and decrease trust in research. When you are assessed by such poor mechanisms it can feel almost impossible to break free from the system. However, even small, gradual, steps can make a big difference. Here are 5 smaller steps you can take to begin moving away from poor proxies
Don’t list IF or H-index on your CV or online profiles
There’s a good chance that you’re already doing this as not everyone lists their H-index or journal impact factors on their CVs or online profiles. However, if you are currently listing those (or your institution does) then removing them is a simple step. In doing so, you help signal that these are not useful metrics and further discourage their use.
To go a step further, you may want to replace these poor proxies with altmetric data, context-dependent citations or even a brief narrative of each output.
Remove journal names from your CV and online profiles
A step above removing poor proxies is removing journal names for your CV and online profiles. I suspect almost all of us list these on our CVs and/or online profiles – I certainly have! The benefit of removing journal names is that you encourage people to focus on the actual content of your work rather than the venue in which it is published.
You can hyperlink directly to the articles or use DOI’s in place of journal names.
Don’t ask where a colleague is publishing
Very much linked to the above, when a colleague has a manuscript ready for submission or has recently published, instead of asking where they published, ask about the work; what they published.
This again shifts the focus from poor proxies and is also a much better (and nicer) question to ask. Asking where someone will/has published feeds into the pressure and, at times embarrassment, of journal choice. Asking what someone has published opens up a conversation about their hard work and may help colleagues feel like their work is more recognised.
Remove journal names from slides
Just as listing journal names on CVs and online profiles, using them in presentations can send the message that where you publish is more important than what you did.
For example, HHMI Janelia have a policy where speakers use identifiers like PMIDs instead of journal names in their presentations. Although a small change, this sends important signals to ECRs that the content is more important than the journal name.
Encourage institutional change
Beyond individual change, you can also strongly encourage your institution to adopt various changes. A great starting point is to get your institution to sign up to declarations such as DORA and COaRA. Whilst simply signing up isn’t much of a step, it can be a great starting point for initiating discussions about research culture and poor proxies. In fact, your institution may already be signed up to these initiatives.
If you sit on hiring committees or faculty committees, you can also encourage a move towards more appropriate assessments, such as narrative CVs or having applications remove journal names and other poor proxies.
If you aren’t in a position to encourage such larger changes at your institution/department, then a small step you can take is to simply talk to students and postdocs about why these metrics are poor and the damage that they do to science. There are some slides you can use here.
header image: Photo by Hayley Murray on Unsplash
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