[Asis-l] _Citation Statistics_: A Report From The International Mathematical Union

[Gerry Mckiernan]

Friends/

Those Damn Statistics: Can't Live WithOut Them, Can't Live With Them 

/Gerry

Citation Statistics
A report from the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in cooperation
with the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics
(ICIAM) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS)

Executive Summary

This is a report about the use and misuse of citation data in the
assessment of scientific research. The idea that research assessment
must be done using "simple and objective" methods is increasingly
prevalent today. The "simple and objective" methods are broadly
interpreted as bibliometrics, that is, citation data and the statistics
derived from them. There is a belief that citation statistics are
inherently more accurate because they substitute simple numbers for
complex judgments, and hence overcome the possible subjectivity of peer
review. But this belief is unfounded. 

[snip]

Using citation data to assess research ultimately means using
citation‐based statistics to rank things—journals, papers, people,
programs, and disciplines. The statistical tools used to rank these
things are often misunderstood and misused. 

[snip]The validity of statistics such as the impact factor and h‐index
is neither well understood nor well studied. The connection of these
statistics with research quality is sometimes established on the basis
of "experience." The justification for relying on them is that they are
"readily available." The few studies of these statistics that were done
focused narrowly on showing a correlation with some other measure of
quality rather than on determining how one can best derive useful
information from citation data. 

[more]

Links to The Full-Text Available at 

[
http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/06/citation-statistics-report-from.html
]

OR

[ http://tinyurl.com/3ldmts ]

Regards,

/Gerry 

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu 

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