Real impact

Here's something that affects the behaviour and even careers of many contributors to the BMJ, yet many readers couldn't care less about it. Editors fall somewhere in between. It's the impact factor, a measure of citations to articles in the journal, which is “capable of recognising some value, some quality” (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39146.545752.BE) or “worthless” (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39146.549225.BE), or has indirectly “distorted the fundamental character...