This Editorial coincides with the release of the San Francisco declaration on research Assessment (DORA), the outcome of a gathering of concerned scientists at the December 2012 meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. * To correct distortions in the evaluation of scientific research, DORA aims to stop the use of the "journal impact factor" in judging an individual scientist's work. The Declaration states that the impact factor must not be used as "a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist's contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions." DORA also provides a list of specific actions, targeted at improving the way scientific publications are assessed, to be taken by funding agencies, institutions, publishers, researchers, and the organizations that supply metrics. These recommendations have thus far been endorsed by more than 150 leading scientists and 75 scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the publisher of Science ). Here are some reasons why:

RC cell cultures were maintained in control medium for 21 days (C/C), maintained in control medium and changed to medium containing PTHrP (1-36) on day 11 (C/P), treated with 100 nM PTHrP (1-36) for 21 days (P/P), or exposed to 100 nM PTHrP (1-36) for 10 days and then transferred to control medium on day 11 (P/C). The number of bone nodules (A) and AP activity (B) were determined on day 21.

It is time for the research community to rethink how the outputs of scientific research are evaluated and, as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment makes clear, this should involve replacing the journal impact factor with a broad range of more meaningful approaches.