Sir

Does the expansion of the Internet and journals' online publishing strategies herald the end of ‘impact factors’? Many scientific publications now have online versions, often freely available. As Internet access is pervasive (and increasing), busy scientists can now sit with their morning coffee and use a computer search engine to look for articles in their narrow area of interest. The computer database can be much more exhaustive, user-friendly and up-to-date than its old-fashioned paper counterpart. As a result, the researcher can now in effect have a customized ‘table of contents’ generated on demand.

The overall effect of this practice seems likely to be a shift in reader emphasis away from particular (‘high-impact’) journals as reference sources, and an increasing importance of specific articles, rather than the journal in which they are published. If this is indeed the case, continued emphasis on ‘impact factors’ as currently calculated would seem to be misguided, and the concept will need to be redefined.