Impact factor, H-index, citation index, and such other indices have been playing an increasing role in scientific assessment of institutions, researchers, allocation of research funds,... across the globe. These indicies do not have any statistical basis but lots of decisions such as ranking of institutions, ranking of departments, assessment of faculty members for hiring and for promotions as well as selection for various awards are being made by using these indices. Several experts across disciplines have been writing that these indicies should have a marginal role, if any, and judgements should be based on critical assessment of the content by experts. But the dependence on these s steadily increasing. This article cites various such documents being published across the globe and across the disciplies and urging decision makers to ignore or at best give a minimal weight to such indices.

翻译：影响因子、H指数、引文索引等指标在全球范围内，在机构科学评估、研究人员评价、科研经费分配等方面发挥着日益重要的作用。这些指标缺乏统计学基础，但诸多决策——如机构排名、院系排名、教职人员招聘与晋升评估、以及各类奖项的评选——却正在依据这些指标做出。各学科的多位专家一直在呼吁，这些指标充其量只应发挥边缘性作用，而评判应基于专家对内容的批判性评估。然而，对这些指标的依赖却在稳步增长。本文引用了全球各学科发表的诸多此类文献，旨在敦促决策者忽略或最多给予此类指标最小化的权重。