I share Dr Gangdev's concerns in part. The impact factor, an invention of Eugene Garfield, ^{Reference Garfield1} is not a necessary part of science. It merely reflects our preoccupation with league tables in every part of life. Any senior professional, whether editor, headmaster, company director or hospital manager, likes to know exactly where their organisation stands with respect to others on at least an annual basis; this seems to be so much more important than non-numerical measures such as letters of appreciation or complaint. It therefore seems to have little relevance to readers of a learned journal, who are not the slightest bit interested in the level of inflation of the Editor's ego, but only in the content of papers published in the journal. There is now evidence that the impact factor does indeed provide a reasonable comparison of the relative quality of a journal; however, what it does not do, despite increasing claims to the contrary, is provide a valid ‘assessment of the quality of individual papers, scientists and departments’. ^{Reference Opthof2} All that can be said about the publication of a paper in a high-quality journal is that the review process is likely to have been carried out with a higher degree of precision and care than that for an equivalent paper in a journal of very low impact factor; therefore, in general, the reader can have more confidence in the presentation of the findings. This is not to say they are necessarily more accurate or of greater scientific significance, although in the broadest terms, they probably are.

But the highly informed reader can select good papers from poor ones without the aid of the impact factor, and the preoccupation of the scientific community with its importance sometimes approaches the ludicrous, such as with the research assessment exercise (RAE) in the UK, which demands articles from high-impact-factor journals, among other measures, in comparing the relative value of scientists. How a nutritionist or a historian can be validly compared with a psychiatrist is, in my view, intrinsically meaningless. I have helped colleagues who have decided to leave academia for a less topsy-turvy land with a set of verses, also derived in part from Robert Burns, and which include the following (sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne as they make their last journey down the university corridor);