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Not even those! The impact factor of a journal is a terrible guide to quality. It is more appropriately thought of as a measure of scientific sex appeal. You m

• raincom 5y ago
  I thought top ranked journals have good reviewers, since the editorial board consists of researchers/professors from top notch schools. Can you share your thoughts why junk get published in such journals? Has it to do with collusion or reputation-laundering or more?
• wmf 5y ago
  There's an order of magnitude difference between the worst paper published in a good venue vs. the "tortured" fake papers in fake journals though.
  • AlexCoventry 5y ago
    That's a low bar, though. The point is that it's very difficult to judge the scientific merits of a paper without actually reading it. (And even then, it's easy to be fooled.)
• nick__m 5y ago
  Lots of junk gets published in top ranked journals. A lot more get published in vanity journals, so I use the impact factor as a first pass filter: I avoid papers from journals not listed the JCR¹ or those with a factor below 1.000. I assume, maybe naively, that if an important finding were to be published in such low quality journal, it would eventually get published in a more legit publication. 1- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342623066_Journal_Citation_Reports_2020_Impact_factor_Ranking_of_2019 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342623066_Journal_C...