What is the impact factor of Warren Buffett?

The frenzy of impact factor got renewed by today's announcement of 2013 impact factors. There will be many speculations and raging with one thing remain as strong as ever, the value and impact of impact factor in our research lives.

Apart from talking and publishing how impact factor is toxic, but still in high impact subscription based journals, there is not much we can do. We all know the ideal, objective behavior, one that is not effected by the name of the author or the journal.

As Warren Buffett says, when everyone is aggressive (in buying stocks) stand back, and when everyone is cautious be aggressive. Of course this rule is related to a real world value, money, and research articles cannot be traded, but there are some striking relationships one would not ignore. For example, one of my mentors told me that a Science paper would guarantee a $500,000 funding (in the US). This makes the publishing related to a real life value. And so far there is only one metric for measuring value of journals, the impact factor. This means, we can gauge how much funding one impact factor can bring (if there is a linear relationship - which there isn't). Judging from Science (2013 IF: 31) each impact factor is worth $16,000 of funding. Do your math when submitting to a journal.

The sad part is that this is all madness and we will soon see monthly impact factors and soon after daily. If we get to the hourly ones, then this is really the academic Wall Street. And then mortgage crisis, etc. History repeats and it shall.