Publication Impact Factor: Does It Matter? [President's Message]

The impact factor (IF) is a metric created for the scientific community to evaluate the quality of technical publications. Likemanymetrics, it can be a valuable tool, but it gives a lot of information in a single number, perhaps twisting some of the meaning in the process. I will briefly review what the IF is, where the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications (TIA) stands, and list a few considerations as to whether itmatters to the IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS). For the latter, theremay be no definite answer, and hearing from you would be very useful to determine the direction of our society in this respect.