What you propose is a hypothesis. Fine. The hypothesis is not supported by any clear evidence. I cannot think of a public university administrator who is not a

What you propose is a hypothesis. Fine. The hypothesis is not supported by any clear evidence. I cannot think of a public university administrator who is not a scientist/researcher/faculty who is familiar with impact factors, the relative strength of journals outside the top 5 and then maybe (Nature, Science, PNAS, Cell[maybe], NEJoM[maybe]), and similar metrics. In contrast, scientists talk about impact factors, citations, and journals all the time. A few years ago, my home country started this enabling system for tenure candidates. Who do you think proposed as criteria, for tenure, the year-weighted citations, the impact factor of the journals in which the research was published as a discriminating factor? Faculties. Who now say that the system is, for all intents and purposes, unchangeable.