TY - JOUR T1 - A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/062109 SP - 062109 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 Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/05/062109.abstract N2 - 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 distributions and 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. ER -