Use of Impact Factors

236

CLINICAL RADIOLOGY

doi:10.1053/crad.2002.0957, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

USE OF IMPACT FACTORS SIR ± The use of `impact factors' is becoming important for scienti®c journals. There are, of course, di€erent ways of manipulating these factors. It has come to our knowledge that the editors of some journals are sending copies of articles published in their journals together with the review copy to the referees, asking them if it is possible to include those articles in the reference list. It is of course a brilliant way of increasing the impact factor for that journal. We question this approach to the publishing of scienti®c articles. We think the authors of the articles should be entrusted to decide on what articles should be referred to. When certain shortcomings are apparent it should of course be handled by the referees. We think that the obvious manipulation of the impact factor, as described, is not honourable. ANDERS HEMMINGSSON

Chief Editor, Acta Radiologica

EDITOR'S COMMENT The above letter is published at the request of the editors of Acta Radiologica. The letter was discussed at a recent Editorial Board meeting. This journal would only alert an author about previous work in Clinical Radiology where the referees had indicated that a certain article (in Clinical Radiology or any other journal) had an essential bearing on the scienti®c discussion. More often, the authors are informed that their article is not accepted because of a similar (nonreferenced) article, previously published in Clinical Radiology. Please see an amusing editorial in Clinical Radiology earlier this year on citation and impact factor by Peter Ell. This has not been selfreferenced!! ADRIAN K. DIXON Editor