Attempts to use new measurements to more finely predict or represent journal quality are bound to falter because of some qualities inherent to journals themselves.
Google’s new “Scholar Metrics” promise to make the h-index viable for journals on a large scale. But problems exist in their approach, some of them easily handled, some not.
We used to have editorial selection and ordering as a natural result of editorial control. With algorithms and news feeds dominating, where are the signals of priority and linked information? Did we really need the packaging?
Google once represented the spirit of Internet optimism distilled into a successful company. Now, with more cynical plays and shuttering experiments, what does Google’s new approach tell us about the Internet of tomorrow?
The outer ring of citation remains a point of vulnerability for quality proxies, as does reducing complex things to simple lists or numbers. When will we learn?
With scientific information propagating in new ways, is the Impact Factor measuring what it was intended to measure?