DFAS-RLG-01: Impact-Based Evaluation and Citation Metrics: An Ethical and Epistemic Invalidity Analysis

DFAS-RLG-01: Impact-Based Evaluation and Citation Metrics: An Ethical and Epistemic Invalidity Analysis introduces Research Legitimacy Governance (RLG) within Dynamic Financial Applied Meta-Science (DFAS).

The work advances a normative governance declaration concerning the role of impact factors, citation counts, and related metrics in scientific evaluation. It argues that these indicators measure diffusion dynamics—including visibility, circulation, network reinforcement, and temporal accumulation—rather than scientific legitimacy, epistemic rigor, methodological responsibility, or accountable knowledge production.

DFAS-RLG-01 therefore distinguishes three non-substitutable domains: knowledge diffusion, knowledge validity, and knowledge responsibility. On this basis, it argues that diffusion cannot legitimately function as a proxy for validity or responsibility and that numerical visibility cannot itself confer scientific legitimacy.

The manuscript goes beyond conventional criticism of research metrics as biased, incomplete, or improperly calibrated. It advances an ethical and epistemic reclassification of impact and citation metrics from judgment-bearing evaluative authorities to non-normative diffusion signals. Their descriptive utility for understanding the circulation of research is retained, while their legitimacy-conferring and judgment-bearing authority is withdrawn.

The analysis further argues that normalization, weighting, field adjustment, alternative indicators, or other forms of metric reform cannot resolve the underlying problem because the defect is structural rather than technical. Accordingly, the work does not propose replacement metrics or alternative scoring systems.

The manuscript also examines the consequences of metric authority for research governance, including responsibility displacement, editorial incentive distortion, temporal blindness in the evaluation of knowledge formation, and the potential reproduction of visibility-based legitimacy assumptions within AI-mediated research environments.

As an alternative foundation for research legitimacy, DFAS-RLG-01 advances path-governed legitimacy, under which evaluation is grounded in documented decision paths, temporal traceability, causal reasoning, methodological commitment, revision history, and identifiable responsibility rather than post-publication numerical visibility.

This work constitutes a normative governance declaration rather than a proposal for metric reform.

Document Code: DFAS-RLG-01
Domain: Dynamic Financial Applied Meta-Science (DFAS)
Governance Layer: Research Legitimacy Governance (RLG)
Status: Normative Governance Declaration — Withdrawal of Metric Authority