Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations

Abstract

1 The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) was originally designed to aid libraries in deciding which 2 journals to index and purchase for their collections. Over the past few decades, however, it 3 has become a relied upon metric used to evaluate research articles based on journal rank. 4 Surveyed faculty often report feeling pressure to publish in journals with high JIFs and mention 5 reliance on the JIF as one problem with current academic evaluation systems. While faculty 6 reports are useful, information is lacking on how often and in what ways the JIF is currently used 7 for review, promotion, and tenure (RPT). We therefore collected and analyzed RPT documents 8 from a representative sample of 129 universities from the United States and Canada and 381 9 of their academic units. We found that 40% of doctoral, research-intensive (R-type) institutions 10 and 18% of master’s, or comprehensive (M-type) institutions explicitly mentioned the JIF, or 11 closely related terms, in their RPT documents. Undergraduate, or baccalaureate (B-type) 12 institutions did not mention it at all. A detailed reading of these documents suggests that 13 institutions may also be using a variety of terms to indirectly refer to the JIF. Our qualitative 14 analysis shows that 87% of the institutions that mentioned the JIF supported the metric’s use 15 in at least one of their RPT documents, while 13% of institutions expressed caution about the 16 JIF’s use in evaluations. None of the RPT documents we analyzed heavily criticized the JIF or 17 prohibited its use in evaluations. Of the institutions that mentioned the JIF, 63% associated it 18 with quality, 40% with impact, importance, or significance, and 20% with prestige, reputation, 19 or status. In sum, our results show that the use of the JIF is encouraged in RPT evaluations, 20 especially at research-intensive universities, and indicates there is work to be done to improve 21 evaluation processes to avoid the potential misuse of metrics like the JIF. 22 1 PeerJ Preprints | https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27638v1 | CC BY 4.0 Open Access | rec: 5 Apr 2019, publ: 5 Apr 2019