Recognizing the many ways that researchers (and others) contribute to science and scholarship has historically been challenging but we now have options, including CRediT and ORCID.
The 2018 release of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) now features citation distributions for each journal. Poor implementation may prevent these figures from being used and may actively encourage abuse by predatory publishers.
Publishing a histogram of a journal’s citation distribution won’t alleviate Impact Factor abuse. At best, it will be ignored. At worse, it will generate confusion.
Criticisms of altmetrics often seem to be equally applicable to other forms of research assessment, like the Impact Factor. Phill Jones suggests that is not because of a fundamental opposition to altmetrics but a fear that it will suffer the same pitfalls. The solution is to engage more with a somewhat neglected set of stakeholders; Informaticians.
A trend toward shaming journals that promote their impact factors needs to be rolled back. Impact factors are journal metrics. It’s the other uses that need to be curtailed.