Jeang Kuan-Teh
Retrovirology. 2007 Jun 18;4:42. doi: 10.1186/1742-4690-4-42.
There is a natural tendency to judge a gift by the attractiveness of its wrapping. In some respect, this reflects current mores of measuring the gravitas of a scientific paper based on the journal cover in which the work appears. Most journals have an impact factor (IF) which some proudly display on their face page. Although historically journal IF has been a convenient quantitative shorthand, has its (mis)use contributed to inaccurate perceptions of the quality of scientific articles? Is now the time that equally convenient but more individually accurate metrics be adopted?
人们自然倾向于根据礼物包装的吸引力来评判礼物。在某些方面，这反映了当前基于发表作品的期刊封面来衡量科学论文重要性的社会习俗。大多数期刊都有一个影响因子（IF），有些期刊会在首页自豪地展示它。尽管从历史上看，期刊影响因子一直是一种方便的定量简写方式，但它的（误）用是否导致了对科学文章质量的不准确认知呢？现在是不是应该采用同样方便但更具个体准确性的指标的时候了？
