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I don't think it's the wrong target. Being a chief editor has a certain prestige, and many prominent scientists start their own journals (usually in specialized

I don't think it's the wrong target. Being a chief editor has a certain prestige, and many prominent scientists start their own journals (usually in specialized areas that are not crowded). Of course, the whole point is to give a better alternative to editors and scientists, "and they will come". Impact factors will follow, it's not like NPG and Elsevier have a lock in them.

ludflu 15y ago
Right. Impact factors are a pretty objective metric. While the journals covered in a citation index are a matter of editorial discretion, that's not really where the problem is. For example, the Web of Science sold by ThomsonReuters indexes many high impact journals that are published by its competitor Elsevier. If a journal consistently gets lots of citations, all the major citation indexes will include it, no matter if its open access, or published by a competitor's company. If they neglected to, their citation products would become useless and the company would lose subscribers to the indexes that did a better job.