Wearing my hat as the PI of an upcoming national survey of Canadian residents and docs, I wondered if anyone would like to suggest any medical journalology questions that would be useful to ask of the general physician population in Canada?

Erica Frank

I would certainly like to know what your respondents know about Impact Factors; how much it influences where they publish and/or what they read; and, perhaps, most importantly, for those who are in academia, what importance they know or believe promotion committees, chairs, or deans attach to the IF of journals in which they seek to publish?

Barry Pless

Erica:

Thanks for the offer.

I am very interested in Barry's last question as well (“perhaps, most importantly, for those who are in academia what importance they know or believe promotion committees, chairs, or deans attach to the IF of journals in which they seek to publish?”).

It would be even better if they could distinguish between what they have evidence of and what they suspect. My reading of the literature and conversations with colleagues leads me to conclude that many of us have the sense that the IFS is having an influence on these decisions, but we don't have much hard evidence of it.

Also, you might include the other players that are important in some situations (what do respondents know/believe about what the university level decision makers think about this?).

Regards,

Gary Holden

Dear WAME,

The policy guide book for academic promotion at this university

(http://www.hr.unsw.edu.au/employee/acad/acprom.pdf) requires the head of school’s report on the applicant “to provide comments on...standing of journals etc. in which the applicant’s publications appear.”

The application should among other things “summarise any other ways in which [the applicant’s] expertise in the area of research/development has been recognised ... Examples...awards or fellowships,...citations...”

In the Faculty of Arts, impact factors are not popular—indeed many arts academics are unaware of them. Those of us whose work includes material published in relatively high-impact health/medical journals cite them in applications for promotion; however, I understand that in some medical faculties, publication counts are formally multiplied by the impact factors of the journals in which they appear for the purpose of measuring research output.

For university (as distinct from faculty-level) promotion committees seeking to establish the intellectual impact of work outside their own disciplines, IFs are a supposedly objective measure of “standing”.

Juliet Richters

I've written tenure and promotion letters for faculty at institutions (Ohio State comes to mind) where the candidate’s publication list has been formatted to include both the impact factor and relative rank for each of the journals in which they have published. Identifying how many institutions share this practice might be informative.

Mary Christopher
Editor, Veterinary Clinical Pathology

I guess the question is not why Ohio State chooses to do so, but how much importance you attach to this information when writing these letters. Why does it matter how many institutions share this practice…the key is…is it a wise, fair and truly useful practice?

I. B. Pless
Editor, Injury Prevention

Thanks to folks for the suggestions they’ve given. But to clarify: 

This is an opportunity to ask a question of rank-and-file (i.e. ALL) Canadian physicians, not specifically academicians or researchers.

So far, I think the most relevant questions I've seen for this broader population would be something like:

Information published in the peer-reviewed literature is trustworthy: strongly agree, agree, neither a/d, disagree, strongly disagree

OR

Evidence from the peer-reviewed literature is the most compelling reason for me to change my practice patterns: strongly agree, agree, neither a/d, disagree, strongly disagree

OR

In a typical year, about how often do you change the way you practice medicine based on reading a single article in a biomedical journal? 0-10+ times

While these are perception questions, they’re relevant to every clinician (a critical criterion).

Again, thanks for folks’ input, and would welcome thoughts on this—it's exciting to have WAME's input at such a formative stage in journalogical research.

Gratefully,

Erica