When More Really Isn't Better: Aligning Policies and Outcomes in Ecology

Abstract

Recently, we and others have called attention to the fact that science policies should be structured to achieve our overall intellectual and social objectives (Holbrook 2012, Schekman 2013, Anderson et al. 2015). Using this rubric to test a policy’s “theoretical adequacy” (sensu Holbrook 2010), there is a growing consensus regarding the insufficiency of measuring a publication’s (or a scientist’s) quality by inference from the Impact Factor of the journal where an article is published (see San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, ASCB 2012).