The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) aims “to improve the ways in which the outputs of scientific research are evaluated”. The signers want to stop the misuse of journal-based metrics, such as the journal impact factor. So the general recommendations include not to use the journal impact factor to measure the quality of individual research articles or to judge an individual scientist’s work.
Find useful literature about citation analyses and impact factors by the IVS-BM and IVS-CPT.
The editorial of Science (17 May 2013) explains the reasons why the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the publisher of Science) has signed the declaration.