From lismcgr at MA.ULTRANET.COM Mon Dec 4 15:08:27 2000 From: lismcgr at MA.ULTRANET.COM (Bill) Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 15:08:27 -0500 Subject: Call for papers: Library Trends special issue on theory Message-ID: From: William E. McGrath, Professor Emeritus, Department of Information and Library Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo As Editor of a Library Trends special issue "Current Theory in Library and Information Science (LIS)" to be published in the spring of 2002, I am seeking a few additional papers. Papers may be in either of two broad categories: 1.Reviews of existing theory. These papers may survey the existing literature on a particular theory of a particular domain, either broadly or narrowly defined. Papers may discuss the strength and weaknesses of the theory. 2.Original theoretical research--creating or building theory. These papers should explicitly discuss the theoretical context in which the research has been done and how it contributes to the theory. There are many definitions of theory. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines it, in part, as: "A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena." A definition I like is: "Any explanation that helps to understand the variance of quantifiable phenomena (one or more dependent variables)." The more satisfactory the explanation, the greater the understanding. A good theory is simple, with independent variables highly correlated with a dependent variable and may be either deterministic or probabilistic. This definition is within the tradition of orthodox philosophy of science: hypothesis testing, confirmation, verifiability, falsification, generalization, etc. Possible topics are: Domain definitions and categories; Searching and retrieval theory; Definitions of Theory in LIS--a Typology; Fundamental Forces in LIS--Unifying Theories; Accounting for Variance in LIS; Reductionism in Library Theory; Contributions of LIS to other disciplines; Behavioral explanations; The sociology of LIS; The sociology of any discipline and its affect on LIS; The Unknowns of LIS. Reviews of literature on these or any other topic. Library Trends is a highly cited journal with world-wide distribution, worthy of your best work. Papers should be written with a large audience in mind. This mandates that papers be written with minimal mathematics-i.e., without mathematical symbols and equations if possible, although mathematical concepts may be expressed verbally. A few illustrations, graphs and figures may be helpful in understanding mathematical concepts. Please send proposed title and abstract to William E. McGrath, P. O. Box 534, Westford, MA 01886 USA or reply by e-mail: lismcgr at ma.ultranet.com From gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU Mon Dec 4 18:02:49 2000 From: gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 18:02:49 -0500 Subject: ABS: Smith, Scientific graphs and the hierarchy of the sciences: A Latourian survey of inscription practices Message-ID: Lawrence D. Smith : e-mail : ldsmith at maine.edu Title Scientific graphs and the hierarchy of the sciences: A Latourian survey of inscription practices Author Smith LD, Best LA, Stubbs DA, Johnston J, Archibald AB Journal SOCIAL STUDIES OF SCIENCE 30: (1) 73-94 FEB 2000 Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 58 Times Cited: 1 Abstract: Studies comparing the cognitive status of the sciences have long sought to identify the distinguishing features of 'hard' and 'soft' science. Attempts by philosophers of science to ground such distinctions in abstract principles and by sociologists of science to detect relevant differences (for example, in consensus levels) have met with limited success. However, recent investigations of scientists' concrete practices of data representation provide new leads on this problem. In particular, Bruno Latour has argued that graphs are essential to science due to their ability to render phenomena into compact, transportable and persuasive form. Applying Latour's notion of 'graphism' to the hierarchy of sciences, we found that the use of graphs across seven scientific disciplines correlated almost perfectly with their hardness, and that the same pattern held up across ten specialty fields in psychology. Author Keywords: data representation, fractional graph area, graphism, hard science, Latour, soft science KeyWords Plus: SOCIAL-SCIENCES, PSYCHOLOGY, CONSENSUS, FIELDS Addresses: Smith LD, Univ Maine, Dept Psychol, 5742 Clarence Cook Little Hall, Orono, ME 04469 USA. Univ Maine, Dept Psychol, Orono, ME 04469 USA. Publisher: SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, LONDON Cited Author Cited Work Volume Page Year BAZERMAN C SHAPING WRITTEN KNOW 153 1988 BEST LA ANN M AM PSYCH ASS B 1999 BEYER JM SOCIOL QUART 19 68 1978 BIGLAN A J APPL PSYCHOL 61 123 1990 BIGLAN A J APPL PSYCHOL 57 195 1973 BOHRNSTEDT GW AM BEHAV SCI 23 786 1980 BUTLER DL BEHAV RES METH INSTR 25 81 1993 CHAMBERS JM GRAPHICAL METHODS DA 1983 CLEVELAND VISUALIZING DATA 1993 CLEVELAND WS AM STAT 38 261 1984 COHEN IB INTERACTIONS SOME CO 6 1994 COLE S AM J SOCIOL 89 111 1983 COLE S MAKING SCI NATURE SO 111 1992 COLE S METRIC SCI ADVENT SC 209 1978 COLLINS R SOCIOL FORUM 9 155 1994 COMTE A POSITIVIST PHILOS A 1 1896 COZZENS SE SOC STUD SCI 15 127 1985 DAVIS CC SCIENCE 141 308 1963 DAVIS JA INT ENCYCL SOC SCI 15 497 1968 FUNKHOUSER HG OSIRIS 3 269 1937 GIER RN EXPLAINING SCI COGNI 190 1988 GOLINSKI J MAKING NATURAL KNOWL 145 1998 GOODING DC FARADAY REDISCOVERED 105 1985 GOULD SJ HIDDEN HIST SCI 39 1995 GROSS AG RHETORIC SCI 74 1990 HACKING I REPRESENTING INTERVE 249 1983 HAGSTROM WO CI COMMUNITY CH4 1965 HANKINS TL ISIS 90 50 1999 HANSON N PATTERNS DISCOVERY 70 1958 HARGENS LL AM SOCIOL REV 53 139 1988 HARGENS LL SOC FORCES 72 1177 1994 HAUSER L LIB INFORMATION SCI 8 367 1986 HOLMES FL VALUES PRECISION 198 1995 JAKOBOVITS LA AM PSYCHOL 22 792 1967 KNORRCETINA KD PHILOS SOC SCI 11 335 1981 KOSSLYN SM ELEMENTS GRAPH DESIG 1992 KROHN R BIOL PHILOS 6 181 1991 LATOUR B LAB LIFE CONSTRUCTIO CH2 1986 LATOUR B REPRESENTATION SCI P 19 1990 LAUDAN L PROGR ITS PROBLEMS T 151 1977 LODAHL JB AM SOCIOL REV 37 57 1972 LODGE M MAGNITUDE SCALING QU CH2 1981 LYNCH M SOC STUD SCI 15 37 1985 MACHADO A J EXPT ANAL BEHAV 70 230 1998 MACHLUP F SO EC J 27 178 1961 MAHON BH J ROY STAT SOC A STA 140 298 1977 MCGUIRE WJ PSYCHOL SCI CONTRIBU 230 1989 MEEHL PE J CONSULT CLIN PSYCH 46 806 1978 PPCHU CA PICTURING SCI PRODUC 1998 PRICE DJD COMMUNICATION SCI EN 3 1970 RUDWICK MJS GREAT DEVONIAN CONTR 1985 SMITH LD IN PRESS AM PSYCHOL TOULMIN S HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 378 1972 TUFTE ER ENVISIONING INFORMAT 1990 WAINER H ANNU REV PSYCHOL 32 191 1981 WAINER H EDUC RES 21 14 1992 WILKINSON L AM PSYCHOL 54 601 1999 ZUCKERMAN H SOCIOLOGY SCI 497 1973 ------------------------------------------------------------- (c) ISI, REprinted with permission Please visit their website at www.isinet.com ------------------------------------------------------------- From familyburrell at ENTERPRISE.NET Tue Dec 5 07:50:22 2000 From: familyburrell at ENTERPRISE.NET (Quentin L. Burrell) Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 12:50:22 -0000 Subject: Uncitedness and self-citations Message-ID: Recent list contributions on these two topics have been interesting but no-one seems to have suggested a possible connection. I know that it is unwise to speculate in the absence of data, but I have a suspicion that one of the possible prime reasons for self-citations is to avoid uncitedeness, or at least low-citedness. Before he complains, let me say that I would fully agree with Eric Ackerman that this just fuels the "supposition and speculation" surrounding self-citations except that I am suggesting that self-citation can be a defensive as well as an aggressive strategy in the citation game. Mike Koenig reports apocryphally that high peer rating is highly correlated with self-citation, but this is not surprising. What is disconcerting is where self-citations are the sole citations or at least predominate a paper's citations. It seems to me that in citation analyses one should certainly not simply omit self-citations but that they could in some way be discounted. If a paper receives 100 citations, 80 of which are self-citations, is its "impact" not less than one whose 100 citations include ony 20 self-citations? One simple way to build this in would be by discounting self-citations according to the degree to which they dominate the citations as follows: If a paper receives N citations, of which a proportion p are self-citations, then its discounted citation score (DCS) is (1-p)N + (1-p)pN, so that each of the (1-p)N non-self-citations is given full weight but each of the pN self-citations is discounted by a factor (1-p). In the examples above, 20 non-self-citations + 80 self-citations gives, since p=0.8 here, a DCS of 0.2x100 + 0.2x0.8x100 = 20 + 16 = 36. Similarly in the converse mix, 80 non-self-citations + 20 self-citations gives (p=0.2) a DCS of 0.8x100 + 0.8x 0.2x100 = 80 + 16 = 96. A 50-50 mix would lead to a DCS of 75, all 100 non-self-citations a DCS of 100 and all 100 self-citations a DCS of 0. Note that, so far as calculations are concerned, it is easiest to write DCS = (1-p)N + (1-p)pN = (1-p)(1+p)N = (1-p^2)N I would be interested to know what list members think of these scores or, more to the point, has anyone investigated this kind of thing before? As a final point, I would concur with Ronald Rousseau that in citation analyses one needs to refer to the particular database and, most importantly, to the time period. Incorporating the time parameter to develop a stochastic model of citation accumulation would be most interesting. Again could people point me in the right direction if this has already been done (possibly by Ronald himself?). Best wishes Quentin Burrell -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wkoehler at OU.EDU Tue Dec 5 09:05:31 2000 From: wkoehler at OU.EDU (Wallace Koehler) Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 08:05:31 -0600 Subject: Uncitedness and self-citations In-Reply-To: <001901c05eba$13cb6a40$0a72a1d4@enterprise.net> Message-ID: This is all very interesting. I would add yet another variable to the mix - co-authored papers. My students and I have collected data from a number of journal. We find (to no great surprise) that the frequency of journal co-authorship (2+ authors)as well as "multi-authorship" (3+ authors) have increased over time, at least in the IS fields -- for example the mean number of authors per AD/JASIS article in the 1950s was on the order of 1.2 but rose to about 1.9 in the 1990s. With this increase in article co-authorship, problems of measurement of self-citation may arise. If I were to self-cite an article where I am the sole author, does that count as 1 cs? If I self-cite an article where I am the senior of 14 co-authors, is that 0.07 cs? or 1 cs? Where I am not senior, but one of several co-authors? To add yet another wrinkle, we suspect that "different disciplines exhibit different behavior." What we have found in IS may not hold across other disciplines. We have begun to explore literature in the humanities. Our first venture was ISIS, a history of science journal. ISIS began publication in 1913. It was then and remains today largely the vehicle of single authors. Should we then add some kind of "correction" for field behavior, field behavior over time? These same issues have, of course, been addressed in the literature for productivity measures. If we lack agreement there, can we reach concensus on impact measures. At 12:50 PM 12/5/00 +0000, you wrote: > Recent list contributions on these two topics have been interesting but >no-one seems to have suggested a possible connection. I know that it is >unwise to speculate in the absence of data, but I have a suspicion that >one of the possible prime reasons for self-citations is to avoid >uncitedeness, or at least low-citedness. self-citations are the sole >citations or at least predominate a paper's citations. to which they >dominate the citations as follows: > is (1-p)N + (1-p)pN, so that each of the (1-p)N non-self-citations is >given full weight but each of the pN self-citations is discounted by a >factor (1-p). 0.2x100 + 0.2x0.8x100 = 20 + 16 = 36. 0.2x100 = 80 + 16 > = 96. A 50-50 mix would lead to a DCS of 75, all 100 non-self-citations a > DCS of 100 and all 100 self-citations a DCS of 0. Note that, so far as >calculations are concerned, it is easiest to write DCS = (1-p)N + (1-p)pN >= (1-p)(1+p)N = (1-p^2)N I would be interested to know what list members >think of these scores or, more to the point, has anyone investigated this >kind of thing before? to the time period. Incorporating the time >parameter to develop a stochastic model of citation accumulation would be >most interesting. Again could people point me in the right direction if >this has already been done (possibly by Ronald himself?). Best wishes >Quentin Burrell **************************************************************** Wallace Koehler Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Studies University of Oklahoma wkoehler at ou.edu 405.325.3921 FAX 405.325.7648 From familyburrell at ENTERPRISE.NET Wed Dec 6 17:47:28 2000 From: familyburrell at ENTERPRISE.NET (Quentin L. Burrell) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 22:47:28 -0000 Subject: Fw: Statistics and information/text retrieval Message-ID: I am sure that there is someone on our list who can help. If you can, please do! Quentin Burrell ----- Original Message ----- From: "richard bowyer" To: Sent: 06 December 2000 18:32 Subject: Statistics and information/text retrieval > Hi there, > > Does anyone know of any good sources of > statistical approaches to information/text retrieval? > > I am interested in approaches based on clustering > and in particular the kinds of distance metrics used. > > Any pointers to useful literature would be most helpful. > > Thanks > > Rich. > > ____________________________________________________________________________ _________ > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com > From David.Watkins at SOLENT.AC.UK Wed Dec 6 20:00:48 2000 From: David.Watkins at SOLENT.AC.UK (David Watkins) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 01:00:48 +0000 Subject: David Watkins/SBS/Southampton Institute is out of the office. Message-ID: I will be out of the office from 12/06/2000 until 12/11/2000. This is an automated response. If appropriate, I will respond to your message when I return. From aparna at NISTADS.RES.IN Thu Dec 7 05:16:10 2000 From: aparna at NISTADS.RES.IN (Aparna Basu) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 15:46:10 +0530 Subject: Announcement of workshop in India Message-ID: Dear Gretchen, I am forwarding an announcement about a workshop to be held in New Delhi in Feb 2001 on Emerging trends in Science and Technology Indicators: Aspects of Collaboration. Could you please put it on the SIGMETRICS network. With regards, Aparna Basu National Institute of Science Technology and Development Studies K.S. Krishnnan Marg, Pusa Gate, New Delhi 110012, INDIA e-mail: aparna at nistads.res.in; abasu_academic at hotmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: second announcement.doc Type: application/msword Size: 224768 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eackerma at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU Thu Dec 7 07:12:16 2000 From: eackerma at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (eackerma) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 07:12:16 -0500 Subject: Uncitedness and self-citations: assumption of guilt? Message-ID: I must say that, my reputation for crankiness notwithstanding ;), I found Quentin Burrell's notion that there may be a linkage between the uncitedness of a published paper(s) and the amount of self-citation quite interesting. I certainly have nothing against speculation in general, and think that this notion of a uncitedness-self-citedness linkage certainly bears further empirical investigation. I would also hasten to add that I am not suggesting that self-citations are *never* used to avoid uncitedness or low-citedness. After all, researchers are people, and exhibit the same range of behaviors both desireable and undesireable as any other human beings. However... ...at the risk of becoming the SIGMETRIC list's in-house curmudgeon (an honor which may be too late to avoid! 8-D), I must disagree that one can assume that "one of the possible *prime* reasons for self-citations is to avoid uncitedeness, or at least low-citedness" (empahsis mine). Even if self-citations "are the sole = citations or at least predominate a paper's citations" as Burrell points out, how does that fact alone justify the treatment of all self-citations with suspicion and automatically discounted value? What of the researcher building on a previous body of reputable research who is also working in a field not currently fashionable or in vogue? This researcher is likely to have few options but to draw from their own work. Should their self-citations be *automatically* discounted? In some repects this difference of opinion between those that automatically view self-citations with suspicion and those that don't is analogous to the classical notion of how one view's a glass partially filled with water. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? Are self-citations automatically assumed to be primarly self-serving entities for unnecessarily inflating citedness unless proven otherwise (the glass of water is half-empty), or are they assumed to serve the same legitimate purposes as other citations until proven otherwise (the glass of water is half-full)? However, once having established that in a particular case (or group of cases) that the self-citations encountered are indeed primarily self-serving, then it certainly would be legitimate for devising some method for discounting or eliminating them from a study's data. In which case, I think Burrell might be on to something: >One simple way to build this in would be by discounting = >self-citations according to the degree to which they dominate the = >citations as follows: > >If a paper receives N citations, of which a proportion p are = >self-citations, then its discounted citation score (DCS) is (1-p)N + = >(1-p)pN, so that each of the (1-p)N non-self-citations is given full = >weight but each of the pN self-citations is discounted by a factor = >(1-p). >In the examples above, 20 non-self-citations + 80 self-citations gives, = >since p=3D0.8 here, a DCS of 0.2x100 + 0.2x0.8x100 =3D 20 + 16 =3D 36. >Similarly in the converse mix, 80 non-self-citations + 20 self-citations = >gives (p=3D0.2) a DCS of 0.8x100 + 0.8x 0.2x100 =3D 80 + 16 =3D 96. > A 50-50 mix would lead to a DCS of 75, all 100 non-self-citations a DCS = >of 100 and all 100 self-citations a DCS of 0. > I will also concede that the time and effort required to check the "legitimacy" of each self-citation is probably prohibitive for most studies, especially those dealing with hugh datasets. But the solution does not lie, in my humble opinion, in the automatic assumption of guilt implicit in research methodologies that require the discounting or omission of all self-citations. Perhaps those who are researching citation motivation may be able to shed more light on this situation. In any case, my thanks to Quentin Burrell for getting the discussion started again! Eric Ackermann School of Information Sciences University of Tennessee-Knoxville Eric Ackermann eackerma at utk.edu Vernon Hughes' law of low-level statistics, "named for an atomic physicist of note at Yale. His law states that despite the fact that a three-sigma effect [i.e., confidence interval] appears to have a 99.73 percent chance of being right, it will be wrong half the time. This is real life." -from Gary Taubes' book "Bad Science, The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion" (NY: Random House,1993: p. 84). From ronald.rousseau at KH.KHBO.BE Thu Dec 7 08:36:44 2000 From: ronald.rousseau at KH.KHBO.BE (Rousseau Ronald) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 14:36:44 +0100 Subject: Self-citations In-Reply-To: <3A30F97E@webmail.utk.edu> Message-ID: It is clear that on the issue of self-citations no position is always right or always wrong. In that sense Quentin Burrell's formula (a formula I sympathise with) could be used as a citation lower bound, while counting all citations as equal (self-citations or not) could yield an upper bound. Note (in defense of the upper bound and in addition to Ackerman's points) that 'officially' receiving a self-citation (say in an evaluation exercise) is not an entirely trivial matter. First, you must write an article (how many authors have only one article to their credit?), and second it must be published in a journal covered by ISI (the meaning - here - of the word 'official'). Again, and depending on the field, not always a triviality. Ronald Rousseau From tabahan at EBSI.UMONTREAL.CA Thu Dec 7 08:57:22 2000 From: tabahan at EBSI.UMONTREAL.CA (Tabah Albert) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 08:57:22 -0500 Subject: Uncitedness and self-citations: assumption of guilt? In-Reply-To: <3A30F97E@webmail.utk.edu> Message-ID: I agree with Eric Ackermann that one needs to look into citer motivation. However, one also needs to look into the citer's past work and the place that work takes in his/her specialty area. First, we must discount new or emergent fields. In the first few months after a discovery one would expect to see a high self-citation rate because the migration of researchers into that field and their article production has not yet taken place. Second, it is difficult to discuss this topic without dealing with specific cases and naming names. Perhaps I can be allowed to name two researchers in our field with a relatively high self-citation rate but the value of whose contribution should leave no one in doubt: Eugene Garfield and Anthony van Raan. Especially in his Current Comments over a few decades, Garfield's articles contain a large number of self-citations. But those can be explained (I think, I can). Either they involve the use of an instrument of which he is the sole proprietor (his SCI and SSCI databases) or topics and work that no one has written about. In science it happens often that so long as an instrument or material is available in very limited quantities, all work relating to that material is published by a small group of collaborating scientists. As soon as the material becomes available "en masse", others flood in, publish, and the rate of self-citations drops significantly - as in the case of fullerene research in the early 1990s. Much of the useful data available from the SCI and SSCI databases for years have been available to ISI insiders or very expensive to obtain. Given the volume of data, their wide relevance and the volume of Garfield's writing, a high self-citation rate is almost inevitable. A cursory look at "Essays of an Information Scientist" makes it clear that there is hardly anything that Garfield has not written about. Especially when he makes connections to previous articles in series dealing with "Most-cited ... papers" or "Journal Citation Studies. ...", again a high self-citation rate becomes inevitable. Of course, one also needs to admit that there is a certain amount of marketing effort for his products. As to Tony van Raan, he heads a large and important research group that has been very productive and authoritative over the last fifteen years. Inevitably, a significant amount of his present work builds on previous work that is both unique and consistent. A large number of his self-citations or citations to authors within his research group can be explained by the fact that his/their work has not been replicated or supplanted by anyone. While I may at times wonder why they have not cited one or two other items, I personally am comfortable with the high self-citation rates exhibited by their work. As it is, we are talking about rather productive authors. In the case of authors with little work and a high self-citation rate, it becomes more difficult to avoid thoughts about self-promotion. I think, what I am trying to say is that, we omit self-citations in order to evaluate the true impact of one's work on others. However, by doing that, at times, we end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Where there is "prior art" that is unique or impossible to avoid, a high self-citation rate may become quite acceptable. Albert Tabah University of Montreal Montreal, Canada --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Albert N. Tabah ?cole de biblioth?conomie et des sciences de l'information Universit? de Montr?al CP 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville Montr?al, Qu?bec, Canada H3C 3J7 Tel.: 514-343-7204 Fax: 514-343-5753 albert.tabah at umontreal.ca From gwhitney at UTK.EDU Thu Dec 7 13:29:29 2000 From: gwhitney at UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 13:29:29 -0500 Subject: William Goffman, former Dean of the School of Library Science at Case Western Reserve University (fwd) Message-ID: > Dear Colleagues: > > On 29 February 2000, William Goffman, former Dean of the School of Library > Science at Case Western Reserve University died in Cleveland. Bill is > well known to colleagues and former students as a gifted mathematician who > pioneered work on the epidemiological theory of information dissemination, > among other topics. > > I am seeking cooperation from anyone who is familiar with Bill's work and > could help in the preparation of a suitable brief review of his work for > publication. The following obituary was published in the Case Western > Reserve University magazine, Summer 2000: > > WILLIAM GOFFMAN, a onetime professor and dean at Case > Western Reserve University, died February 29 at his home in Bratenahl, OH. > He was 76. > > Born in Cleveland, Dean Goffman served as a major in the > Army Air Corps during World War II. > > He received a Bachelor of Science and a Ph.D. in mathematics > from the University of Michigan in 1950 and 1954, respectively. He > worked as a private mathematical consultant until 1960, when he became a > staff mathematician and, later, a research associate at the Center for > Documentation and Communication Research at the School of Library Science > at Western Reserve University. He carried out extensive research on > mathematical models in systems design for information retrieval, or > indexing systems for machine searching and on the use of Boolean functions > in machine programming. > > In 1968, he became a full-time professor in the School of > Library Science. His area of specialization was communication theory and > information systems. He was appointed dean of the school in 1971, and > served through 1977. During this time, he also served as director of the > University's Complex Systems Institute (1972-75). He returned to teaching > for a few years before becoming director of the Training Program on > Computer Applications in the Health Sciences at the School of Medicine. > He worked at the medical school until his retirement in 1986, when he was > named professor emeritus and dean emeritus of the School of Library and > Information Science. > > He wrote and contributed to numerous publications and > scientific journals. During the 1970s, Dean Goffman was the principal > investigator for several National Institutes of Health and National > Science Foundation grants. He was elected Fellow of the American > Association for the Advancement of Science in 1982, and is listed in Who's > Who in the World, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in Science and > Engineering. > > Dean Goffman is survived by his wife, Patricia, and a > brother. > > > WHEN RESPONDING PLEASE ATTACH THIS MESSAGE > > ------------------------------------------------------------- > Eugene Garfield, Ph.D. > Past President, American Society for Information Science & Technology - > www.asis.org > Chairman Emeritus, ISI, 3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 > Publisher, THE SCIENTIST, 3600 Market St, > Philadelphia, PA 19104 (www.the-scientist.com) > Tel: 215-243-2205 // Fax: 215-387-1266 > email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu > The Scientist: http://www.the-scientist.com > Home Page: http://garfield.library.upenn.edu > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------- > > From familyburrell at ENTERPRISE.NET Wed Dec 13 06:26:45 2000 From: familyburrell at ENTERPRISE.NET (Quentin L. Burrell) Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 11:26:45 -0000 Subject: Self-citations again Message-ID: My recent note on this topic provoked some interesting responses and I'd like to comment briefly on some of thepoints raised. (i) Eric Ackermann. While I have symapathy with Eric's scholar working in a new or unfashionable area, I would contend that discounting self-citations does not necessarily imply that they are in any way tainted. My view is that if one is doing a citation analysis, it is not to measure the inherent worth of a paper but simply to measure in some way the impact which the paper makes. But it must be the impact on the wider scientific/scholarly community which is paramount, in which case discounting of self-citations must take place. This may seem harsh on the solitary scholar, but a voice in the wilderness is just that until someone hears! (ii) Albert Tabah. Much of what I have said above is also relevant here. So far as the Tony van Raans and Gene Garfields of this world are concerned, I am sure that they would have little to fear using a discounting scheme since the true value of their work is marked by the evident extent to which it is referred to and used by other workers. Again it is the impact on the wider community which is important, and which provides the evidence! (iii) Ronald Rousseau. I would have thought that the lower bound is given by the scoring system which completely omits self-citations, a totally discounted system. In the original set-up we imagined a total of N citations, a proportion p of which are self citations so the totally discounted score is (1-p)N, while the suggested "discounted citation score" had (1-p^2)N. The full score of course is just N. Note that since 1 > 1-p^2 > 1-p, the DCS does give a sort of mid-way discounting. Finally, I would hesitate to support any method of applying subjective judgments to an author's intent in making self-citations but, because of the external impact consideration, would argue in favour of some sort of automatic discounting. The DCS has a nice intuitively reasonable construction and a simple resulting formula to apply. I do not have access to the relevant citation databases so if anyone would like to try it out, I would be most interested to hear from them either directly or through the list. Thanks for comments. Quentin Burrell -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gwhitney at UTK.EDU Tue Dec 19 18:45:12 2000 From: gwhitney at UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 18:45:12 -0500 Subject: CITE: Guimaraes, The world of citations. A challenge for Latin Amer ican science Message-ID: E-MAIL address: guimar at conex.com.br TITLE: The world of citations. A challenge for Latin American science AUTHOR Guimaraes JA JOURNAL INTERCIENCIA 25: (4) 182-183 JUL 2000 Document type: Editorial Material Language: English Cited References: 0 Times Cited: 0 Addresses: Guimaraes JA, UFRGS, Ctr Biotecnol, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. UFRGS, Ctr Biotecnol, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. Publisher: INTERCIENCIA, CARACAS IDS Number: 332QC ISSN: 0378-1844 ---------------------------------------------- If you wish a copy of this document, and can read Microsoft Word documents from Office 98, please contact me privately at gwhitney at utk.edu. If you require other formats, please contact the author directly at the address at the beginning of the message. Please be advised that the file is 1MB in size. Thanks. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Gretchen Whitney, PhD tel 423.974.7919 School of Information Sciences fax 423.974.4967 University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37996 USA gwhitney at utk.edu http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/ jESSE:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/jesse.html SIGMETRICS:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> From gwhitney at UTK.EDU Fri Dec 22 18:05:36 2000 From: gwhitney at UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 18:05:36 -0500 Subject: Happy Holidays! Message-ID: Hi everyone, We wish you the best of the Holiday Season this time of year - what ever you're celebrating, we hope that it's joyful and relaxing. Sigmetrics will resume mid-January. --gw <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Gretchen Whitney, PhD tel 423.974.7919 School of Information Sciences fax 423.974.4967 University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37996 USA gwhitney at utk.edu http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/ jESSE:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/jesse.html SIGMETRICS:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> From Garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Sat Dec 23 14:34:27 2000 From: Garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Garfield, Eugene) Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 14:34:27 -0500 Subject: Happy Holidays! Message-ID: Dear Gretchen and SIGMETRICS colleagues: I return your greetings and wish all a happy and prosperous New Year. Gene Garfield Eugene Garfield, PhD. Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com Publisher, The Scientist www.the-scientist.com email garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu tel 215-243-2205 fax 215-387-1266 home page: www.eugenegarfield.org -----Original Message----- From: Gretchen Whitney [mailto:gwhitney at UTK.EDU] Sent: Friday, December 22, 2000 6:06 PM To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Happy Holidays! Hi everyone, We wish you the best of the Holiday Season this time of year - what ever you're celebrating, we hope that it's joyful and relaxing. Sigmetrics will resume mid-January. --gw <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Gretchen Whitney, PhD tel 423.974.7919 School of Information Sciences fax 423.974.4967 University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37996 USA gwhitney at utk.edu http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/ jESSE:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/jesse.html SIGMETRICS:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: