Declining importance of journal Impact Factors, and move the impact to Open Access

I left this comment on an internal Elsevier forum called Innovation Explorers.

 
"It was interesting to see the several comments about impact and Thomson's Impact Factors (IF). I should note that the impact factor of the journal title containing articles is becoming less and less important. Administrators should try to determine the impact of individual articles, not the impact of the journal title container. (A great article for someone can appear in a small publication with low IF, while mediocre tangential articles can appear in high IF journals.) It has been shown that over the last 20 years, it is becoming less important for authors to get published in high IF journals to get their research noticed. See http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/06/14/more-reason-to-outlaw-impact-factors-from-personnel-discussions/ and "The weakening relationship between the Impact Factor and papers' citations in the digital age." Many are in favor of moving the prestige (and impact) to OA publications because anyone can read the articles, not just subscribers. See http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/05/10/moving-the-prestige-to-open-access-publishing/."