They are more of a millstone from the past that research still drags with it because changing an institution is hard.
It's not that changing is hard, since it would be easy if that's what everyone wanted. It's that you have many competing forces (perhaps that's what you mean by "hard"). The most important is scientists who made their careers in the current system--the people who publish yearly in Nature, for example. They have tremendous political sway and it is not in their interest to change. They will even admit that it is not an ideal system, but no one likes giving up being King.
Edit: I should point out that it is more complicated. Science does need a way to judge which scientists are doing valuable work and which aren't, and currently Impact Factors are one of the main ways this is done now. We don't yet have a great alternative.
I don't think anyone but the traditional publishers wants to keep traditional publishers.
Every scientist I've ever met wants as many people as possible to read (and cite) their work. But the main issue is that the main metric for scientists' performance is number of publications in prestigious journals, and the oldest journals tend to be the most prestigious ones. If a scientist wants to get grant funding or promotions, they have to put up with the copyright terms of the traditional publishers.
Any real change to the system has to start from the government agencies and councils handing out grant funding to research groups. As long as they prefer to fund people with Nature papers over SomeOpenAccessJournal papers, only a few scientists are willing to sacrifice their career for the principle of open access.
Altmetrics is a growing field - I think in the next couple of years we will have an ecosystem of tools (like impactstory.org, altmetric.com) much better and more rounded than impact factors. I also think impact factors are poisonous in their own right.
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It's not that changing is hard, since it would be easy if that's what everyone wanted. It's that you have many competing forces (perhaps that's what you mean by "hard"). The most important is scientists who made their careers in the current system--the people who publish yearly in Nature, for example. They have tremendous political sway and it is not in their interest to change. They will even admit that it is not an ideal system, but no one likes giving up being King.
Edit: I should point out that it is more complicated. Science does need a way to judge which scientists are doing valuable work and which aren't, and currently Impact Factors are one of the main ways this is done now. We don't yet have a great alternative.
I don't think anyone but the traditional publishers wants to keep traditional publishers.
Every scientist I've ever met wants as many people as possible to read (and cite) their work. But the main issue is that the main metric for scientists' performance is number of publications in prestigious journals, and the oldest journals tend to be the most prestigious ones. If a scientist wants to get grant funding or promotions, they have to put up with the copyright terms of the traditional publishers.
Any real change to the system has to start from the government agencies and councils handing out grant funding to research groups. As long as they prefer to fund people with Nature papers over SomeOpenAccessJournal papers, only a few scientists are willing to sacrifice their career for the principle of open access.
Altmetrics is a growing field - I think in the next couple of years we will have an ecosystem of tools (like impactstory.org, altmetric.com) much better and more rounded than impact factors. I also think impact factors are poisonous in their own right.