An index to evaluate the quality of taxonomic publications

The number of citations is not an adequate measure of taxonomic quality, which is a view that is shared with other scientific disciplines (Seglen1997; Valdecasas et al. 2000; Walter et al. 2003). A recent editorial in Nature claims that “... citations are an unreliable measure of importance" (Anon. 2010: 850) and uses two chemistry papers as an example. The first paper was cited 182 times in the same period that the other paper was cited only 13 times. However, the latter paper is recognized as ‘outstanding’ by the experts from the American Chemical Society, which would not be revealed by the arbitrary counting of citations. Similar examples have evoked critical editorial comments in high-impact journals. In the context of a possible future use of the Impact Factor (IF), the editor of EMBO Reports states: