Sir

Scientific institutions are increasingly judged on the quality of the journals in which their staff publish papers. Journal quality is usually presented as its impact factor (IF), the number of citations in a given year to papers published in the two previous years, divided by the number of items published in those previous two years (Journal Citation Reports, Institute for Scientific Information, 1997).

As veterinary researchers, we sometimes find ourselves searching for possible human angles in our work, so that we might publish in medical journals, which tend to have significantly higher IFs than their veterinary counterparts. But we have spotted a simpler and more effective approach that will allow us to publish in appropriate places and still get high ratings. As an example, The Veterinary Record has an IF of about 1, based on approximately 600 citations and 600 papers published in 1995 and 1996. Our institute publishes about 300 papers in two years. Our director need only instruct us all to cite at least two papers from The Veterinary Record in every paper we publish from now on, however loose the connection, for the IF to quickly double. The Veterinary Record would move from being in the top 40% of journals to being in the top 15%.

We could have an even greater impact on journals that publish fewer papers. For example, if our director applied this policy to Veterinary Research Communications, the IF of that journal would increase from less than 1 to more than 6, moving it into the top 3% of journals. If our institute teamed up with two or three others, we could rapidly create a competitor to Nature . Unethical, perhaps, but legal and very much in our interest.