The editorial policies of scientific journals: Testing an impact factor model

Abstract

There is an evident need for the most scrupulous assessment possibleof the fruits of research (in the context considered here; namely, publications)with a qualitative, hence in-depth analysis of the single products of . Butthis would require time and competences which not all policy makers have attheir disposal. Hopefully, quantitative procedures, apparently objective andeasy to apply, would be able to surmount these difficulties. The diffusionof the quantitative evaluation of research is, that is, the policy makers'adaptive response to the need to increase controls of the efficiency of publicspending in since public investment clearly could not be determined at theoutset on the basis of the market's spontaneous, decentralised balancingmechanisms. An essential step towards the prevention of the distortions mostlikely to result from quantitative evaluation is the adoption of quantitativeprocedures of evaluation of the editorial policies of scientific journals– or, rather, of journals which claim to be scientific. Such proceduresmust be designed to highlight any distortions caused by the non-optimal editorialpolicies of journals. With quantitative evaluation, in fact, journals playa crucial role in the formation of public science policies. They thus haveto be subjected to specific monitoring to make sure that their conduct fitsin with the prerequisites necessary for them to perform their semi-officialactivity as certifiers of the quality of the products of research. The phenomenaof the production, divulgation and fruition of scientific discovery are, ofcourse, so complex that it is necessary to weigh them not with a single indicator,however helpful it may be, but with a constellation of indicators. We receivedconfirmation of the reliability of the impact factor as an instrument to monitorthe quality of research and as a means of evaluating the research itself.This is a reassuring result for the current formulation of public policiesand confirms the substantial honesty of the competition mechanisms of thescientific enterprise.