Implications of Web of Science journal impact factor for scientific output evaluation in 16 institutions and investigators’ opinion

Journal based metrics is known not to be ideal for the measurement of the quality of individual researcher’s scientific output. In the current report 16 contributors from Hong Kong SAR, India, Korea, Taiwan, Russia, Germany, Japan, Turkey, Belgium, France, Italy, UK, The Netherlands, Malaysia, and USA are invited. The following six questions were asked: (I) is Web of Sciences journal impact factor (IF) and Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) citation the main academic output performance evaluation tool in your institution? and your country? (II) How does Google citation count in your institution? and your country? (III) If paper is published in a non-SCI journal but it is included in PubMed and searchable by Google scholar, how it is valued when compared with a paper published in a journal with an IF? (IV) Do you value to publish a piece of your work in a non-SCI journal as much as a paper published in a journal with an IF? (V) What is your personal view on the metric measurement of scientific output? (VI) Overall, do you think Web of Sciences journal IF is beneficial, or actually it is doing more harm? The results show that IF and ISI citation is heavily affecting the academic life in most of the institutions. Google citation and evaluation, while is being used and convenient and speedy, has not gain wide ‘official’ recognition as a tool for scientific output evaluation.