Impact Factors - the story goes on, and on...

"I first mentioned the idea of an Impact Factor (IF) in Science in 1955. With support from the National Institutes of Health, the experimental Genetics Citation Index was published, and that led to the 1961 publication of the Science Citation Index." Little did Eugene Garfield realise that journal-based IF's would still be a sourse of heated debate in the second decade of the 21st Century.

In a recent article in PLoS One, Cameron Neylon and Shirley Wu examine the case for article-based metrics and find them wanting. In their concluding remarks, they state that:

"Indeed, the fundamental problem of which paper to read can also have different contexts. Which new papers are relevant to you? Which papers should you read if you are going to pursue research question X? Which papers do you need to read before submitting your paper?"

Quite so, but I suspect that the main influencers in each of these three circumstances are: the title of the article; the name of the author(s) and the aims and scope of the journal, respectively.

IF's matter for assessment purposes, but relevance is a personal thing, not something that can be measured by the wisdom of crowds.