The Journal Impact Factor still consumes Spanish science. For how much longer?

Abstract

The goal of this essay is to provide an answer to the question "Why does Spain still use Journal Impact Factors and other citation-based bibliometric indicators to assess the performance of researchers and institutions?". Despite the growing number of new citation data sources and bibliometric indicators, and the widespread criticism against JIF use by various declarations and manifestos, in Spain it is still a necessary condition to publish in journals with an impact factor (from Journal Citation Reports) or similar indicators in order to enter in an academic career and to prosper in it. The JIF has penetrated all research-related organizations (funding and evaluation agencies, universities, research centres, hospitals, and cultural centres). It is being mercilessly applied at all levels, from authors, research groups, and institutions, to early-career grant programmes and research projects of every kind. After showing how this requisite is omnipresent in the text of all calls published by the main funding and evaluation agencies in Spain, we try to explain how it came to this. We go over the origin of the JIF and the intentions of its creator, and we review the criticisms that it has received over time, up to the publication of the San Francisco Declaration and the Leiden Manifesto. We discuss the reasons that explain Spain´s blind insistence on keeping the JIF as the gold standard of research assessment. The essay ends with a discussion on why we think the continued support of this policy is damaging science: the JIF promotes scientific monoculture, Publish or Perish culture, and the propagation of impactitis, an illness that is severely altering the moral behaviour of Spanish researchers.