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What's the relevance of "impact factors"? I understand the basic idea behind them, but I don't think publishing research in a low impact factor journal should automatically make said research "completely irrelevant".


It's completely irrelevant because it has little to nothing to do with the original post, much like how you wouldn't link to a paper on algorithmic complexity in a post about Facebook, because "they're both about computers."

Additionally, the author of the paper displays some worryingly crackpot-like symptoms. He claims that it's "Nobel worthy", (!!) but Citebase can find no citations.

I know nearly nothing about condensed matter physics, but skimming the paper reveals that his theory doesn't really make any testable predictions, much less the "grand slam" predictions that would result in a Nobel, like room-temp superconductivity.

Impact factor is tremendously flawed, but as a quick sanity check, when you're not sure if something makes any sense at all, it is of great use.


He cited it himself in two other papers :/

As far as crackpot symptoms, it looks like he's a biblical literalist too!


Ah ha, you missed my very careful weasel wording! I said that Citebase found no citations, not that it actually had no citations, mwa ha ha.




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