Maybe the way forward is to break the impact factor game. Everybody in a field get together and publish a paper: literally every topologist could put their name on the paper “Generally we all agree that Topology is an interesting topic.”

Everybody in the field cite that paper going forward, giving it a massive impact factor, making impact factor useless. Do this occasionally, randomly, do it in niche sub fields, everybody who goes to a conference put their name on the paper “we had a nice time at <conference> this year.”

I mean, it is something everybody hates, right? There’s no point in preserving it.

True!