  Most researchers acknowledge an intrinsic hierarchy in the scholarly journals
('journal rank') that they submit their work to, and adjust not only their
submission but also their reading strategies accordingly. On the other hand,
much has been written about the negative effects of institutionalizing journal
rank as an impact measure. So far, contributions to the debate concerning the
limitations of journal rank as a scientific impact assessment tool have either
lacked data, or relied on only a few studies. In this review, we present the
most recent and pertinent data on the consequences of our current scholarly
communication system with respect to various measures of scientific quality
(such as utility/citations, methodological soundness, expert ratings or
retractions). These data corroborate previous hypotheses: using journal rank as
an assessment tool is bad scientific practice. Moreover, the data lead us to
argue that any journal rank (not only the currently-favored Impact Factor)
would have this negative impact. Therefore, we suggest that abandoning journals
altogether, in favor of a library-based scholarly communication system, will
ultimately be necessary. This new system will use modern information technology
to vastly improve the filter, sort and discovery functions of the current
journal system.
