Indexing, Impact Factors, and Scientific Accuracy: The Needle of Quality in a Haystack of Mirages

Abstract

Thanks to internet scientists do not need to flutter among libraries for consulting peer-reviewed articles: now articles are just a few clicks away of researchers’ desks. However, the access, spread, and impact of scientific papers depends too much on the “fame” and propagandistic power of the publishers and indexing companies uploading into the search engines papers by authors paying more, in detriment of other works. Such a process underestimates reader’s capability for determining when an article is suitable and meritorious for his/her work. That also reduces the visibility of papers which functionality and necessity for being read are to be judged by readers. All these contrasts with the role formerly played by indexation. Prior the arrival of internet, index’s role was to connect the libraries of the world in order to supply readers the articles they asked for independently of the name, institution, or even language of the colleagues who wrote the requested papers. Today’s scientists can combine the strictness applied in former times with the modern speed acquired thanks to internet. Each scientist can use internet for searching country-by-country, university-by-university, and language-by-language works related to his/hers. Thus, by widening their search horizons, scientists can avoid to discover how to produce warm water just because some trendy publisher or indexing company has silenced its discovery.