Assessing Impact of Biomedical Scholarship in the Information Age: Observations on the Evolution of Biomedical Publishing and a Proposal for a New Metric

This editorial contains a discussion on the state of the art of biomedical publication and the history and development of indexing, its evolution, and complexity. A traditional method of journal assessment is in use-the journal impact factor-but it is compromised by well-documented deficiencies. Present-day alternatives to the journal impact factor are listed, and a proposal to develop a novel metric of merit in publication, the influence factor, is described.