pentatomid_fan t1_iuj5p00 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 6:51 PM

Reply to comment by ahmadove in Nose Picking Could Increase Risk for Alzheimer’s and Dementia by jstohler

Thanks for the response, i didn't know that this journal had that reputation. I generally only pay much attention to the journals in my field (agricultural entomology). Impact factor isn't really a thing most of my colleagues think about AFAIK, as specialized fields often have low IF. Journal of Economic Entomology for example is 2.381 and Biological Control is 3.857. which is lower than Scientific Reports (4.996). but they are also some of the the main journals for the field. Maybe IF should not be the only metric to consider.

And yes, by pay-to-publish, i meant that current crop of journals that will accept anything without peer-review, but yes publishing costs money. Looks like the term I should have used is "predatory publishing".

Edit for some bad editing

ahmadove t1_iujln1y wrote on October 31, 2022 at 8:39 PM

You're absolutely right. IF is only appropriate as a metric when used to compare journals within the same field. Clinical stuff that make it to NEJM or The Lancet make the most cutting edge stuff in Nature, Cell and Science look like they're less important, then you have other smaller journals that my field publishes in like JASN and Kidney international and NDT which are even lower IF.

However sci rep has really lowered its IF even compared to other journals within the field, which in an ideal world should still be completely fine as its a negative-result journal making it inherently low impact. But unfortunately the stigma remains. Whenever you say you published there, people automatically give you a look in the life sciences. I would never bash negative results, they're vital. I do however dislike genuinely insignificant studies and especially associational studies. Correlations have importance but they're so... So overused it hurts.