---
title: "Locate Eugene Garfield's primary text for his warnings that the impact factor should not be used to evaluate individuals, to replace the Tier-4 Wikipedia citation"
type: "question"
status: "answered"
date_raised: "2026-07-09T00:00:00.000Z"
answered_log: "2026-08-09 — Both original quotes are now run to ground, closing this question. Quote 1 (the 'wrong hands' sentence) was confirmed Tier 1 against Garfield's own 2005 congress address on 2026-08-07. Quote 2 (the 'tenure and promotion' sentence) does not resolve as originally framed — because it turns out not to be Garfield's sentence at all: [[claim-cameron-2005-not-garfield-authored-tenure-and-promotion-sentence]] confirms it as Brian D. Cameron's 2005 footnoted paraphrase of Garfield's 1998 letter, not a quotation of Garfield. The child question this gap spawned, [[question-garfield-tenure-promotion-quote-cameron-attribution]], is answered on the same date. Answering this the honest way: not by finding Garfield's own version of quote 2, but by confirming no such version exists to find."
tags: ["bibliometrics","citation-metrics","impact-factor","garfield","verification","source-criticism"]
---


[[claim-garfield-warned-impact-factor-unfit-to-judge-individuals]] was promoted
from the 2026-07-09 hop capture carrying an `[unverified-quote]` flag: the two
direct Garfield quotes it rests on are cited only to **Tier-4 Wikipedia** (the
"Impact factor" article). sources.md treats a load-bearing quotation attributed
to a named person as a claim that should escalate to Tier 1–2 — his own words,
not a secondary retelling. Wikipedia may locate the quote; the citation should
point at the primary.

**What to verify — find the primary source for each quote:**

1. **"I expected it to be used constructively while recognizing that in the wrong
   hands it might be abused."** Reportedly from Garfield's 2005 remarks. Candidate
   primary: Eugene Garfield, "The Agony and the Ecstasy — The History and Meaning
   of the Journal Impact Factor," International Congress on Peer Review and
   Biomedical Publication, Chicago, 16 September 2005 (text/slides hosted at
   garfield.library.upenn.edu). Confirm the sentence verbatim and the venue/date.

2. **Impact-factor-style metrics are "an inappropriate and misleading measure of
   individual research, especially if used for tenure and promotion."** Locate
   the specific Garfield editorial or *Current Contents* / *The Scientist* essay
   this paraphrase/quote traces to; his essay archive at
   garfield.library.upenn.edu is the natural home. Confirm exact wording, since
   the note currently paraphrases part of it.

**Why it matters:** the note gates retrieval on `audit_status: flagged`.
Grounding both quotes in Garfield's own archived text would lift the note toward
`verified-verbatim` and strengthen the vault's recurring
inventor-warned-against-the-misuse thread it shares with
[[claim-dora-2013-declaration-rejects-impact-factor-for-research-assessment]].

**Progress, 2026-08-07 (partial — left open, not answered):** Quote 1 is
resolved. Garfield's 2005 congress address, "The Agony and the Ecstasy — The
History and Meaning of the Journal Impact Factor" (self-archived,
garfield.library.upenn.edu), was read directly and confirms the "wrong hands"
sentence verbatim, Tier 1. A better-matching primary also surfaced for the
underlying warning: Garfield's 1998 letter to *Der Unfallchirurg*, "I have
always warned against this use," now the frontmatter source on
[[claim-garfield-warned-impact-factor-unfit-to-judge-individuals]]. Quote 2
did **not** resolve as originally framed — it did not turn up in any of the
four Garfield primary texts read this round (adding the 1996 BMJ essay and
the 2001 Nature letter to the two above). It appears instead to belong to
Brian D. Cameron's 2005 secondary characterization of Garfield, unconfirmed
(paywalled on the one fetch attempt). That specific gap now has its own
question: [[question-garfield-tenure-promotion-quote-cameron-attribution]].
A new claim-note captures the mechanism Garfield gives for the warning
(within-journal citation variance, per Seglen):
[[claim-garfield-seglen-within-journal-variance-undermines-individual-use]].


## Progress log

- 2026-08-09 — Both original quotes are now run to ground, closing this question. Quote 1 (the 'wrong hands' sentence) was confirmed Tier 1 against Garfield's own 2005 congress address on 2026-08-07. Quote 2 (the 'tenure and promotion' sentence) does not resolve as originally framed — because it turns out not to be Garfield's sentence at all: [[claim-cameron-2005-not-garfield-authored-tenure-and-promotion-sentence]] confirms it as Brian D. Cameron's 2005 footnoted paraphrase of Garfield's 1998 letter, not a quotation of Garfield. The child question this gap spawned, [[question-garfield-tenure-promotion-quote-cameron-attribution]], is answered on the same date. Answering this the honest way: not by finding Garfield's own version of quote 2, but by confirming no such version exists to find.