PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Vincent Larivière
AU  - Véronique Kiermer
AU  - Catriona J. MacCallum
AU  - Marcia McNutt
AU  - Mark Patterson
AU  - Bernd Pulverer
AU  - Sowmya Swaminathan
AU  - Stuart Taylor
AU  - Stephen Curry
TI  - A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions
AID  - 10.1101/062109
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 062109
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/11/062109.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/11/062109.full
AB  - Although the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is widely acknowledged to be a poor indicator of the quality of individual papers, it is used routinely to evaluate research and researchers. Here, we present a simple method for generating the citation distributions that underlie JIFs. Application of this straightforward protocol reveals the full extent of the skew of these distributions and the variation in citations received by published papers that is characteristic of all scientific journals. Although there are differences among journals across the spectrum of JIFs, the citation distributions overlap extensively, demonstrating that the citation performance of individual papers cannot be inferred from the JIF. We propose that this methodology be adopted by all journals as a move to greater transparency, one that should help to refocus attention on individual pieces of work and counter the inappropriate usage of JIFs during the process of research assessment.