Use of impact factors

Abstract

The use of impact factors is becoming important for scientific journals. There are, of course, different ways of manipulating these factors. It has come to our attention that editors of some journals are sending copies of reports published in their journals together with the review copy to the referees and asking them to include those reports in the reference list. It is of course a brilliant way of increasing the impact factor for that journal. We question that approach to publishing scientific reports. We think that researchers should be entrusted to decide what work should be referred to. When certain shortcomings are apparent, it should, of course, be handled by the referees. We think that the obvious manipulation of the impact factor as described is not honourable.