It works. Politicians have known this for centuries and now even physicists and mathematicians have caught on.

Thus the reasoning behind eigenfactor.org, the latest brainstorm from Carl Bergstrom's lab — most of the actual code and elbow-grease being provided by Jevin West and Ben Althouse. It covers all the journals that impact factor would, but also gives an estimate of the impact of citations to non-journals (which lets us see that some software is more influential than some journals). Plus you get to see all kinds of useful things about how much the journals cost (something Carl's been interested in for some time), and how that breaks down by paper or by citation. All in all, it's a very fun and potentially very useful tool for anyone interested in the academic publishing system, and/or applications of Markov chains.

Disclaimer/Incestuous Amplification: Rumors that Carl arranged for me to publicize everything his lab does in this weblog in exchange for beers from his private collection whenever I'm in Seattle are — sadly exaggerated.

Will wonders never cease. We don't have beer collections out here in the toolies. We have beer, but not for long. I have seen beer bottle collections, but they were empty.