From gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU Wed Sep 6 18:27:27 2000 From: gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 18:27:27 -0400 Subject: Impact Factor in Brazil Message-ID: Hello all, A colleague just returned from a conference on scholarly publishing in Brazil, and commented on the extensive use of the Impact Factor in the awarding of promotions, funding for research, and other benefits in research and publishing. Can someone expand on this use of the IF in the region? 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 azun at METU.EDU.TR Sat Sep 9 04:39:53 2000 From: azun at METU.EDU.TR (Ali Uzun) Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000 11:39:53 +0300 Subject: Impact Factor in Brazil Message-ID: Hello, In several Turkish universities promotion decisions are based, among other things, on the number and readership of papers published in SCI& SSCI journals. These journals are divided into 3 broad categories according to their Impact Factors ranking as given in the JCRs. In the evalations papers are credited accordingly. In addition, several government agencies, and universities award the authors up to 250USD per paper published in the SCI& SSCI. Regards Dr. Ali Uzun From Michel.Menou at WANADOO.FR Sat Sep 9 09:48:12 2000 From: Michel.Menou at WANADOO.FR (Michel J. Menou) Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000 15:48:12 +0200 Subject: Impact Factor in Brazil In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Questions: a) How many Brazilian journals are taken into account for calculating the IF? b) Is it more important for a Brazilian (or any other country in the region) to be recognized by her/his peers in mainstream science, or to make a noteworthy contribution to the scientific development of his/her country (I know that eventually the 2 may go hand in hand, for the exceptionally gifted ones)? c) Is it a difference of nature between the "leading role" of the NYSE at the international level, and the leading role of citations counts and IF? In plain language, are not we conforming to a form of imperialism? Michel Menou At 18:27 06/09/00 -0400, Gretchen Whitney wrote: >Hello all, > A colleague just returned from a conference on scholarly publishing in >Brazil, and commented on the extensive use of the Impact Factor in the >awarding of promotions, funding for research, and other benefits in >research and publishing. > Can someone expand on this use of the IF in the region? > Thanks. ========================================= Michel J. Menou, Ph.D., Professor of Information Policy Department of Information Science, School of Informatics City University Northampton Square, London EC1V OHB, U.K. Email: Michel.Menou at wanadoo.fr Http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/informatics/is/mjm.html From Garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Sat Sep 9 15:38:27 2000 From: Garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Garfield, Eugene) Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000 15:38:27 -0400 Subject: Impact Factor in Brazil Message-ID: Here is the list of 17 journals from Brazil covered in the 1999 Journal Citation Reports. But I don't quite understand its relevance to the comments that follow. In general, the more local low impact journals that are included in the calculation of impact, the lower will be the overall impact of that country's impact. It is not unusual to look only at the impact in international journals. 1999 JCR Science Edition ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- JOURNAL SUMMARY LIST Selection: BRAZIL Sorted by: Journal Title Total Cites Impact Factor Immediacy Index Current Articles Cited Half-Life ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Journals 1 - 17 (of 17) [ 1 ] Page 1 of 1 Ranking is based on your journal and sort selections. Mark Rank Abbreviated Journal Title (linked to full journal information) ISSN 1999 Total Cites Impact Factor Immediacy Index 1999 Articles Cited Half-life 1 ARQ BIOL TECNOL 0365-0979 95 0.091 0 2 ARQ BRAS MED VET ZOO 0102-0935 93 0.119 0.059 102 3 ARQ NEURO-PSIQUIAT 0004-282X 294 0.173 0.042 190 5.7 4 BRAZ ARCH BIOL TECHN 0365-0979 4 0.065 0.042 48 5 BRAZ J GENET 0100-8455 106 0.189 0 3.9 6 BRAZ J MED BIOL RES 0100-879X 1119 0.517 0.069 204 5.3 7 COMPUT APPL MATH 0101-8205 38 0.250 0.500 4 8 ECLET QUIM 0100-4670 8 0.036 0.000 9 9 GENET MOL BIOL 1415-4757 21 0.250 0.031 96 10 J BRAZIL CHEM SOC 0103-5053 212 0.436 0.025 80 3.5 11 MEM I OSWALDO CRUZ 0074-0276 1281 0.636 0.046 241 7.3 12 PESQUI AGROPECU BRAS 0100-204X 452 0.106 0.021 290 9.1 13 PESQUISA VET BRASIL 0100-736X 52 0.178 0.000 20 14 QUIM NOVA 0100-4042 329 0.304 0.083 133 4.6 15 REV BRAS ZOOTECN 0100-4859 34 0.056 0.120 158 16 REV MICROBIOL 0001-3714 127 0.212 0.000 32 5.5 17 REV SOC BRAS ZOOTECN 0100-4859 118 0.089 0 5.0 Journals 1 - 17 (of 17) [ 1 ] Page 1 of 1 I can easily visualize a group of scientists who make a significant impact within their own countries because they are focused on problems of great national interest. They may or may not also publish good work in international journals but not of unusually high impact. I do not understand your leap to the issue of imperialism. What exactly does that mean? Gene ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Copyright (c) 1999 Institute for Scientific Information Eugene Garfield, PhD. President, American Society for Information Science (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: Michel J. Menou [mailto:Michel.Menou at WANADOO.FR] Sent: Saturday, September 09, 2000 9:48 AM To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor in Brazil Hi Questions: a) How many Brazilian journals are taken into account for calculating the IF? b) Is it more important for a Brazilian (or any other country in the region) to be recognized by her/his peers in mainstream science, or to make a noteworthy contribution to the scientific development of his/her country (I know that eventually the 2 may go hand in hand, for the exceptionally gifted ones)? c) Is it a difference of nature between the "leading role" of the NYSE at the international level, and the leading role of citations counts and IF? In plain language, are not we conforming to a form of imperialism? Michel Menou At 18:27 06/09/00 -0400, Gretchen Whitney wrote: >Hello all, > A colleague just returned from a conference on scholarly publishing in >Brazil, and commented on the extensive use of the Impact Factor in the >awarding of promotions, funding for research, and other benefits in >research and publishing. > Can someone expand on this use of the IF in the region? > Thanks. ========================================= Michel J. Menou, Ph.D., Professor of Information Policy Department of Information Science, School of Informatics City University Northampton Square, London EC1V OHB, U.K. Email: Michel.Menou at wanadoo.fr Http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/informatics/is/mjm.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Michel.Menou at WANADOO.FR Sun Sep 10 10:30:46 2000 From: Michel.Menou at WANADOO.FR (Michel J. Menou) Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 16:30:46 +0200 Subject: Impact Factor in Brazil In-Reply-To: <899D53E20C6CD411ACCF00D0B75AE326122E06@isi-mail.isinet.com > Message-ID: Since not everybody on the list might be concerned with the use of citations and IF in research evaluation in countries and fields which do not belong to the big league, I'd rather refer to the work of the late Mike Moravcsick and follow up efforts as reflected in the following publications: Moravcsik, M. J., (ed.). "Strengthening the coverage of Third World Science. The bibliographic indicators of the Third World's contribution to science. Deliberations, conclusions and initiatives of an ad-hoc international task force for assessing the scientific output of the Third World. Eugene, OR., Institute of Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, 1986. Arvanitis, Rigas; Gaillard, Jacques, (eds.). Les indicateurs de science pour les pays en developpement. Science indicators for developing countries. Proceedings of the International conference on science indicators for developing countries; Paris, 15-19 October 1990. Paris, ORSTOM Editions, 1992. The leap on the issue of imperialism simply referred to the fact that when a measure is built on the basis of the achievements, needs and choices of the more powerful, applying it indiscriminately to all others, including the less served, is an imposition. This is why the production of local resources is so important. A good example is SciELO (www.scielo.br) At 15:38 09/09/00 -0400, Gene Garfield wrote: >Here is the list of 17 journals from Brazil covered in the 1999 Journal >Citation Reports. But I don't quite understand its relevance to the >comments that follow. In general, the more local low impact journals that >are included in the calculation of impact, the lower will be the overall >impact of that country's impact. snip Sure. Thus Botswana will lag far behind Norway, even in Forestry. So what? Do they play in the same league? Do they have the same individual objectives and social role? If at least country rankings would be corrected on the basis of the number of active scientists, with some coefficient for their budgets. >snip Michel PS By the way, it is fair to mention that ISI supported part of the activities undertaken by the task force assembled by Mike Moravcsik. We even had a party at Gene's place. From Garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Mon Sep 11 10:27:03 2000 From: Garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Garfield, Eugene) Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 10:27:03 -0400 Subject: Impact Factor in Germany and other non-English countries Message-ID: It seems that no matter what ISI does its coverage of countries for which English is not the native language the word bias is used. Now comes the latest report from our friends at Leiden University in which it is claimed there is evidence of "serious language-bias in the use of citation analysis for the evaluation of national science systems. It seems that ISI covers too many German language publications. They report the "first evidence" (sic!!) of such bias. In other words, if you remove the German language papers from the database you will increase the impact of Germany in the rankings. This monumental discovery is reported in " First evidence of serious language-bias in the use of citation analysis for the evaluation of national science systems." Research Evaluation v.9(2),p.155-6 (Aug. 2000). This provocative title is an implicit criticism of citation analysis, but in fact it is simply of way of saying-- do citation analysis our way. Regardless of the mischievous titling of the paper the main observation that must be made with respect to the use of any comprehensive literature database. The more inclusive it is of third world and non-English language publications, and therefore presumably better for information retrieval purposes, the lower will be the overall impact for the countries involved. They also suggest that there is a bias in computing the overall impact of US and UK output because there are no non-English journals. However, they fail to point out that because ISI serves the interests of librarians and scientist users there is a substantial coverage of low impact English language publications in all fields, many of which are in fact local as e.g. the Texas Journal of Science. Eugene Garfield ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Eugene Garfield, Ph.D. E-mail: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu Telephone: (215)243-2205 // Fax: (215)387-1266 Web site: www.eugenegarfield.org President, American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) - www.asis.org Chairman Emeritus, ISI, 3501 Market St , Philadelphia, PA 19104-3389 www.isinet.com Pres.,Ed.-in-Chief, The Scientist, 3600 Market St , Philadelphia, PA 19104-2645 www.the-scientist.com -----Original Message----- From: Michel J. Menou [mailto:Michel.Menou at WANADOO.FR] Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 10:31 AM To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor in Brazil Since not everybody on the list might be concerned with the use of citations and IF in research evaluation in countries and fields which do not belong to the big league, I'd rather refer to the work of the late Mike Moravcsick and follow up efforts as reflected in the following publications: Moravcsik, M. J., (ed.). "Strengthening the coverage of Third World Science. The bibliographic indicators of the Third World's contribution to science. Deliberations, conclusions and initiatives of an ad-hoc international task force for assessing the scientific output of the Third World. Eugene, OR., Institute of Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, 1986. Arvanitis, Rigas; Gaillard, Jacques, (eds.). Les indicateurs de science pour les pays en developpement. Science indicators for developing countries. Proceedings of the International conference on science indicators for developing countries; Paris, 15-19 October 1990. Paris, ORSTOM Editions, 1992. The leap on the issue of imperialism simply referred to the fact that when a measure is built on the basis of the achievements, needs and choices of the more powerful, applying it indiscriminately to all others, including the less served, is an imposition. This is why the production of local resources is so important. A good example is SciELO (www.scielo.br) At 15:38 09/09/00 -0400, Gene Garfield wrote: >Here is the list of 17 journals from Brazil covered in the 1999 Journal >Citation Reports. But I don't quite understand its relevance to the >comments that follow. In general, the more local low impact journals that >are included in the calculation of impact, the lower will be the overall >impact of that country's impact. snip Sure. Thus Botswana will lag far behind Norway, even in Forestry. So what? Do they play in the same league? Do they have the same individual objectives and social role? If at least country rankings would be corrected on the basis of the number of active scientists, with some coefficient for their budgets. >snip Michel PS By the way, it is fair to mention that ISI supported part of the activities undertaken by the task force assembled by Mike Moravcsik. We even had a party at Gene's place. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From delooze at GRENOBLE.INRA.FR Tue Sep 12 11:08:52 2000 From: delooze at GRENOBLE.INRA.FR (de looze =?iso-8859-1?Q?Marie-Ang=E8le?=) Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 17:08:52 +0200 Subject: Impact Factor in Brazil In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20000910155922.00adcec0@pop.wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: Sorry for the quality of my English, but I feel engaged in this debate! Eug?ne Garfield created a fantastic tool during the sixties, called the SCI . This tool generated other tools (like the JCR for example), which are used today everywhere in the world for multiple objectives :evaluation of researchers, core of science, evolution of field of research, prospective, history etc. "a citation culture" told us Paul Wouters in his thesis. But nobody is perfect and the SCI unfortunately is sharing this imperfection! But its bases and the results it produces are very very useful. The question is not thus to speak about imperialism, but rather about knowing how it would be possible to better use the tool or to improve this tool. Until now, as far as I know, nobody had the dynamism to create a competitor tool for European research...Even if a lot of money has been spent in the European research programs on IST and so one... For a long time I dreamed of a better representation of the European journals, of research of the Third World in the SCI, of women works, etc... Isn't it thus possible to have a constructive collaboration with the ISI to make this tool evenmore useful to our countries, our specialists of information, the community of the researchers, the firms ...? kind regards 16:30 10/09/2000 +0200, vous avez ?crit : >Since not everybody on the list might be concerned with the use of >citations and IF in research evaluation in countries and fields which do >not belong to the big league, I'd rather refer to the work of the late >Mike Moravcsick and follow up efforts as reflected in the following >publications: > >Moravcsik, M. J., (ed.). "Strengthening the coverage of >Third World Science. The bibliographic indicators of the Third >World's contribution to science. Deliberations, conclusions and >initiatives of an ad-hoc international task force for assessing the >scientific output of the Third World. Eugene, OR., Institute of >Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, 1986. > >Arvanitis, Rigas; Gaillard, Jacques, (eds.). Les indicateurs de science >pour les pays en developpement. Science indicators for developing >countries. Proceedings of the International conference on science >indicators for developing countries; Paris, 15-19 October 1990. Paris, >ORSTOM Editions, 1992. > >The leap on the issue of imperialism simply referred to the fact that when >a measure is built on the basis of the achievements, needs and choices of >the more powerful, applying it indiscriminately to all others, including >the less served, is an imposition. >This is why the production of local resources is so important. A good >example is SciELO (www.scielo.br) > >At 15:38 09/09/00 -0400, Gene Garfield wrote: > >>Here is the list of 17 journals from Brazil covered in the 1999 Journal >>Citation Reports. But I don't quite understand its relevance to the >>comments that follow. In general, the more local low impact journals that >>are included in the calculation of impact, the lower will be the overall >>impact of that country's impact. snip >Sure. Thus Botswana will lag far behind Norway, even in Forestry. So what? >Do they play in the same league? Do they have the same individual >objectives and social role? If at least country rankings would be corrected >on the basis of the number of active scientists, with some coefficient for >their budgets. > >>snip > >Michel > >PS By the way, it is fair to mention that ISI supported part of the >activities undertaken by the task force assembled by Mike Moravcsik. We >even had a party at Gene's place. > > Marie-Ang?le de Looze Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique INRA/SERD (Sociologie et Economie de la Recherche D?veloppement) Universit? Pierre Mend?s France BP 47 38040 Grenoble Cedex 9 France Tel : 33 4 76 82 54 41 Fax : 33 4 76 82 54 55 http://www.upmf-grenoble.fr/adest/ http://www.upmf-grenoble.fr/inra/ e-mail personnel delooze at asi.fr From aparna at NISTADS.RES.IN Wed Sep 13 03:20:24 2000 From: aparna at NISTADS.RES.IN (Aparna Basu) Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 12:50:24 +0530 Subject: Impact Factor in Brazil Message-ID: Dear Gretchen, I agree with Marie-Angele de looze, that the ISI tools have had a pathbreaking effect in several areas of research. I would welcome collaboration with the ISI to look at science journals in India. If several countries enter into this exercise one could create an Extra-SCI. I believe this has been suggested earlier by others as well. Aparna Basu ----- Original Message ----- From: de looze Marie-Ang?le To: Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 8:38 PM Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor in Brazil Sorry for the quality of my English, but I feel engaged in this debate! Eug?ne Garfield created a fantastic tool during the sixties, called the SCI . This tool generated other tools (like the JCR for example), which are used today everywhere in the world for multiple objectives :evaluation of researchers, core of science, evolution of field of research, prospective, history etc. "a citation culture" told us Paul Wouters in his thesis. But nobody is perfect and the SCI unfortunately is sharing this imperfection! But its bases and the results it produces are very very useful. The question is not thus to speak about imperialism, but rather about knowing how it would be possible to better use the tool or to improve this tool. Until now, as far as I know, nobody had the dynamism to create a competitor tool for European research...Even if a lot of money has been spent in the European research programs on IST and so one... For a long time I dreamed of a better representation of the European journals, of research of the Third World in the SCI, of women works, etc... Isn't it thus possible to have a constructive collaboration with the ISI to make this tool evenmore useful to our countries, our specialists of information, the community of the researchers, the firms ...? kind regards 16:30 10/09/2000 +0200, vous avez ?crit : >Since not everybody on the list might be concerned with the use of >citations and IF in research evaluation in countries and fields which do >not belong to the big league, I'd rather refer to the work of the late >Mike Moravcsick and follow up efforts as reflected in the following >publications: > >Moravcsik, M. J., (ed.). "Strengthening the coverage of >Third World Science. The bibliographic indicators of the Third >World's contribution to science. Deliberations, conclusions and >initiatives of an ad-hoc international task force for assessing the >scientific output of the Third World. Eugene, OR., Institute of >Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, 1986. > >Arvanitis, Rigas; Gaillard, Jacques, (eds.). Les indicateurs de science >pour les pays en developpement. Science indicators for developing >countries. Proceedings of the International conference on science >indicators for developing countries; Paris, 15-19 October 1990. Paris, >ORSTOM Editions, 1992. > >The leap on the issue of imperialism simply referred to the fact that when >a measure is built on the basis of the achievements, needs and choices of >the more powerful, applying it indiscriminately to all others, including >the less served, is an imposition. >This is why the production of local resources is so important. A good >example is SciELO (www.scielo.br) > >At 15:38 09/09/00 -0400, Gene Garfield wrote: > >>Here is the list of 17 journals from Brazil covered in the 1999 Journal >>Citation Reports. But I don't quite understand its relevance to the >>comments that follow. In general, the more local low impact journals that >>are included in the calculation of impact, the lower will be the overall >>impact of that country's impact. snip >Sure. Thus Botswana will lag far behind Norway, even in Forestry. So what? >Do they play in the same league? Do they have the same individual >objectives and social role? If at least country rankings would be corrected >on the basis of the number of active scientists, with some coefficient for >their budgets. > >>snip > >Michel > >PS By the way, it is fair to mention that ISI supported part of the >activities undertaken by the task force assembled by Mike Moravcsik. We >even had a party at Gene's place. > > Marie-Ang?le de Looze Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique INRA/SERD (Sociologie et Economie de la Recherche D?veloppement) Universit? Pierre Mend?s France BP 47 38040 Grenoble Cedex 9 France Tel : 33 4 76 82 54 41 Fax : 33 4 76 82 54 55 http://www.upmf-grenoble.fr/adest/ http://www.upmf-grenoble.fr/inra/ e-mail personnel delooze at asi.fr From isidro at CINDOC.CSIC.ES Wed Sep 13 04:33:36 2000 From: isidro at CINDOC.CSIC.ES (Isidro F. Aguillo) Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 10:33:36 +0200 Subject: Impact Factor in Germany and other non-Englishcountries Message-ID: PLEA FOR A NEW IMPACT FACTOR This is very important topic for our discipline. I do not think the primary problem is with the geographical coverage of the Citation Indexes family and the scarce representation of non-english speaking journals. **Obviously**, I would like to see a better coverage of Third world countries and more spanish, french or german-language journals, but as there is (now???): - evidence against the effect of adding "second level" journals to global perfomance of the countries, - the selection criteria for additional titles is matter of debate and, - last, but not least, it is (very??) expensive to add many more periodicals, I suggest a different (more scientometric?? and commercial!!) approach. Several authors pointed the problem is not with SCI and family of databases, but with the rankinkgs of the JCR and specially with the Impact Factor indicator. The indiscrimate use of IF, a fact every scientometrician has warned about, is surely behind some of the biases about "adequate" coverage of SCI+SSCI+AHCI. During last decades several shortcommings of IF has been pointed and alternative indexes has been suggested but ISI has never adopted any of the suggested changes. As some of the proposals are mainly academic exercises difficult to implement, I could understand ISI's attitude. But there are, at least, several changes that are very EASY and ECONOMICAL to make and they could improve significantly IF value. The proposal is to generate annual JCR with a different set of indexes including a new impact factor (NIF) with - an expanded citation window (three or, better, four year period, not more), - excluding author self-citations and - using a more restricted set of document types. A second impact factor adjusting the values according discipline (CIF) is becoming popular among scientometrics and it must be added. The other statistics such as the immediacy or half-life indexes are seldom used (I do not remember anybody using them ...). There are several advantages for these new indexes. They are very easy to calculate, so ISI do not need to change the way they compilate JCR. Some other improvements could be added, but they are not "mandatory" (mainly related with quality evaluation of the source database and the classification of the journals by discipline). During two or three years the annual JCR could provide both old and new IFs, then only the new scheme. But it will be needed a product to cover back years period with the new indexes. A **eighties+nineties combined new fashion JCR** will be probably a "best seller" for ISI, so the additional PROFIT they will obtain from it could help to change their mind about this proposal. For descriptive scientometrics this new product could open a "golden age" as new analysis need to be done. Perhaps the empirical evidence obtained could give new light to the country bias debate. An improved (corrected??) JCR is good news also for managers, politicians and other scientists. And it is a good COMMERCIAL opportunity for ISI! Note: This proposal is made from compilation of ideas from several authors. They publish even extensive empirical evidence and support. I acknowledge them for every point but I am unable to make a complete bibliography ;-). > "Garfield, Eugene" wrote: > > It seems that no matter what ISI does its coverage of countries for > which English is not the native language the word bias is used. Now > comes the latest report from our friends at Leiden University in which > it is claimed there is evidence of "serious language-bias in the use > of citation analysis for the evaluation of national science systems. > It seems that ISI covers too many German language publications. They > report the "first evidence" (sic!!) of such bias. In other words, if > you remove the German language papers from the database you will > increase the impact of Germany in the rankings. > > This monumental discovery is reported in " First evidence of serious > language-bias in the use of citation analysis for the evaluation of > national science systems." Research Evaluation v.9(2),p.155-6 (Aug. > 2000). This provocative title is an implicit criticism of citation > analysis, but in fact it is simply of way of saying-- do citation > analysis our way. > > Regardless of the mischievous titling of the paper the main > observation that must be made with respect to the use of any > comprehensive literature database. The more inclusive it is of third > world and non-English language publications, and therefore presumably > better for information retrieval purposes, the lower will be the > overall impact for the countries involved. > > They also suggest that there is a bias in computing the overall impact > of US and UK output because there are no non-English journals. > However, they fail to point out that because ISI serves the interests > of librarians and scientist users there is a substantial coverage of > low impact English language publications in all fields, many of which > are in fact local as e.g. the Texas Journal of Science. Eugene > Garfield > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Eugene Garfield, Ph.D. E-mail: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu > Telephone: (215)243-2205 // Fax: (215)387-1266 > Web site: www.eugenegarfield.org > President, American Society for Information Science & Technology > (ASIS&T) - www.asis.org > Chairman Emeritus, ISI, 3501 Market St , Philadelphia, PA 19104-3389 > www.isinet.com > Pres.,Ed.-in-Chief, The Scientist, 3600 Market St , Philadelphia, PA > 19104-2645 > www.the-scientist.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: Michel J. Menou [mailto:Michel.Menou at WANADOO.FR] > Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 10:31 AM > To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu > Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor in Brazil > > Since not everybody on the list might be concerned with the use of > citations and IF in research evaluation in countries and fields which > do > not belong to the big league, I'd rather refer to the work of the > late > Mike Moravcsick and follow up efforts as reflected in the following > publications: > > Moravcsik, M. J., (ed.). "Strengthening the coverage of > Third World Science. The bibliographic indicators of the Third > World's contribution to science. Deliberations, conclusions and > initiatives of an ad-hoc international task force for assessing the > scientific output of the Third World. Eugene, OR., Institute of > Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, 1986. > > Arvanitis, Rigas; Gaillard, Jacques, (eds.). Les indicateurs de > science > pour les pays en developpement. Science indicators for developing > countries. Proceedings of the International conference on science > indicators for developing countries; Paris, 15-19 October 1990. > Paris, > ORSTOM Editions, 1992. > > The leap on the issue of imperialism simply referred to the fact that > when > a measure is built on the basis of the achievements, needs and choices > of > the more powerful, applying it indiscriminately to all others, > including > the less served, is an imposition. > This is why the production of local resources is so important. A good > example is SciELO (www.scielo.br) > > At 15:38 09/09/00 -0400, Gene Garfield wrote: > > >Here is the list of 17 journals from Brazil covered in the 1999 > Journal > >Citation Reports. But I don't quite understand its relevance to the > >comments that follow. In general, the more local low impact journals > that > >are included in the calculation of impact, the lower will be the > overall > >impact of that country's impact. snip > Sure. Thus Botswana will lag far behind Norway, even in Forestry. So > what? > Do they play in the same league? Do they have the same individual > objectives and social role? If at least country rankings would be > corrected > on the basis of the number of active scientists, with some coefficient > for > their budgets. > > >snip > > Michel > > PS By the way, it is fair to mention that ISI supported part of the > activities undertaken by the task force assembled by Mike Moravcsik. > We > even had a party at Gene's place. -- ************************************************************ Isidro F. AGUILLO isidro at cindoc.csic.es ------------------------------------------------------------ CINDOC-CSIC Tel: +34-91-563.54.82 Joaquin Costa, 22 Fax: +34-91-564.26.44 28002 Madrid. ESPA?A/SPAIN Editor Cybermetrics (http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics) ************************************************************ From stegmann at UKBF.FU-BERLIN.DE Thu Sep 14 10:27:02 2000 From: stegmann at UKBF.FU-BERLIN.DE (Johannes Stegmann) Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 16:27:02 +0200 Subject: Impact Factor in Germany and other non-English countries In-Reply-To: <899D53E20C6CD411ACCF00D0B75AE32626BD38@isi-mail.isinet.com > Message-ID: The idea (and benefits) of an "Extra-JCR" listing cited-only journals together with their "external" impact factors (constructed on the basis of the cites received from ISI source journals) has been again mentioned on this list very recently by Sinisa Maricic. The problem ISI might face trying to calculate those impact factors are the missing denominators (numbers of papers published) because the non-JCR journals are also mostly non-ISI source journals. Thus, they had to retrieve the missing data from other databases (as we do it). But, because there is an increasing use of "evaluative bibliometrics" (sometimes restricted only to impact factors by our "patrons" in biomedicine), I guess we have some responsibility to find a way to include non-JCR journals in such measures (not mentioning our very duty to warn against a primitve use of bibliometic data - but these warnings are given by ISI and practically everybody with a bit experience in this matter). Using such additional impact factors of non-JCR journals will probably result in lower average impact factors (for institutions or whole countries). When I jumped into bibliometrics three years ago (really not knowing what was waiting there) I did a short (and uncomplete) analysis on some german medical faculties and found that some twenty percent of the papers published by these faculties were published in journals not listed in the JCR. These twenty percent gathered only two percent of the cites (given by ISI source journals). Although the percentage would be higher if all cites (including those given by the non-ISI journals) could be counted, the fact will probably remain that the papers published in non-ISI journals are, in general, cited only at a low rate. Should we cut off these low cited papers (as it is implicitly done by ISI's way) or should we live with lower averages? But where to cut? I think it was mentioned in a paper by Seglen that even a short-cut tail ends up in a tail which could be cut off. Although I try to do some work on non-JCR journals I would argue that bibliometric evaluation can be done (well) on the basis of ISI's tools provided other means are included (e.g. peer review - provided the peers don't rely only on bibliometrics). Besides evaluative bibliometrics, citation analysis has other purposes (e.g. "science mapping"), and this leads inevitably to the question "what is science?" which was answered by Derek de Solla Price with the phrase "...to take as science that which is published in scientific papers". Thus, from a scientific view, it is not so good that in citation analysis all the references cited in non-ISI source journals cannot be included. One has to count manually (which was (is?) actually done in some papers). However, no one would have doubts that (at least in biomedicine) the really relevant papers can be traced by ISI's citation facilities. On the other hand, to argue against this statement, one would have to show that there are "really relevant" papers published in journals not indexed by ISI and not cited in ISI' source journals. I do not know such investigations (I guess in a paper by Henry Small on AIDS it was mentioned that one (ore more) highly cited papers were published in non-ISI journals, but they were cited, of course, in ISI journals). In another context, however, access to *all* cites would be desirable: in order to find two sets of papers (in the sense of the work done by Don Swanson) which are noninteractive, disjoint but complementary (containing terms common to both sets), it is necessary to look wether paper(s) of one set cite paper(s) of the other set, or wether papers of both sets are co-cited. The published papers can be retrieved rather comprehensively from the many databases available, but the citation and co-citation analysis is restricted. Johannes Stegmann ------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Johannes Stegmann Univ. Hospital Benjamin Franklin Free University Berlin Medical Library stegmann at ukbf.fu-berlin.de Hindenburgdamm 30 Tel.: +49 30 8445 2035 D-12200 Berlin Fax: +49 30 8445 4454 Germany Homepage: http://www.medizin.fu-berlin.de/medbib/home.html From helen.atkins at ISINET.COM Thu Sep 14 11:07:31 2000 From: helen.atkins at ISINET.COM (Atkins, Helen) Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 11:07:31 -0400 Subject: Impact Factor and ISI Message-ID: ISI has been producing the JCR since 1975. The 2000 edition, which will be distributed next summer, will be its "silver anniversary" edition. While the product has developed over the years in terms of being offered in different formats (print, fiche, CD, Web), its content has not. Earlier this year, I was given production responsibility for the JCR, and in that role, one of my strategic goals is to create a plan for future development of the product *content*. I can, of course, make no promises about what changes may be made, but it is my intention to survey the main groups of users (bibliometric researchers, publishers, administrators, and librarians) before making any recommendations. We will most likely schedule a series of group discussions next spring. Until then, please rest assured that I will continue to follow all the discussions on this list (and ISSI), although I may not always be able to respond. Helen Atkins ************************************************** Helen Barsky Atkins Director, Database Development ISI 3501 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 215.386.0100 x1218 215.387.4706 (Fax) helen.atkins at isinet.com ************************************************** -----Original Message----- From: Isidro F. Aguillo [mailto:isidro at CINDOC.CSIC.ES] Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 4:34 AM To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor in Germany and other non-Englishcountries PLEA FOR A NEW IMPACT FACTOR This is very important topic for our discipline. I do not think the primary problem is with the geographical coverage of the Citation Indexes family and the scarce representation of non-english speaking journals. **Obviously**, I would like to see a better coverage of Third world countries and more spanish, french or german-language journals, but as there is (now???): - evidence against the effect of adding "second level" journals to global perfomance of the countries, - the selection criteria for additional titles is matter of debate and, - last, but not least, it is (very??) expensive to add many more periodicals, I suggest a different (more scientometric?? and commercial!!) approach. Several authors pointed the problem is not with SCI and family of databases, but with the rankinkgs of the JCR and specially with the Impact Factor indicator. The indiscrimate use of IF, a fact every scientometrician has warned about, is surely behind some of the biases about "adequate" coverage of SCI+SSCI+AHCI. During last decades several shortcommings of IF has been pointed and alternative indexes has been suggested but ISI has never adopted any of the suggested changes. As some of the proposals are mainly academic exercises difficult to implement, I could understand ISI's attitude. But there are, at least, several changes that are very EASY and ECONOMICAL to make and they could improve significantly IF value. The proposal is to generate annual JCR with a different set of indexes including a new impact factor (NIF) with - an expanded citation window (three or, better, four year period, not more), - excluding author self-citations and - using a more restricted set of document types. A second impact factor adjusting the values according discipline (CIF) is becoming popular among scientometrics and it must be added. The other statistics such as the immediacy or half-life indexes are seldom used (I do not remember anybody using them ...). There are several advantages for these new indexes. They are very easy to calculate, so ISI do not need to change the way they compilate JCR. Some other improvements could be added, but they are not "mandatory" (mainly related with quality evaluation of the source database and the classification of the journals by discipline). During two or three years the annual JCR could provide both old and new IFs, then only the new scheme. But it will be needed a product to cover back years period with the new indexes. A **eighties+nineties combined new fashion JCR** will be probably a "best seller" for ISI, so the additional PROFIT they will obtain from it could help to change their mind about this proposal. For descriptive scientometrics this new product could open a "golden age" as new analysis need to be done. Perhaps the empirical evidence obtained could give new light to the country bias debate. An improved (corrected??) JCR is good news also for managers, politicians and other scientists. And it is a good COMMERCIAL opportunity for ISI! Note: This proposal is made from compilation of ideas from several authors. They publish even extensive empirical evidence and support. I acknowledge them for every point but I am unable to make a complete bibliography ;-). > "Garfield, Eugene" wrote: > > It seems that no matter what ISI does its coverage of countries for > which English is not the native language the word bias is used. Now > comes the latest report from our friends at Leiden University in which > it is claimed there is evidence of "serious language-bias in the use > of citation analysis for the evaluation of national science systems. > It seems that ISI covers too many German language publications. They > report the "first evidence" (sic!!) of such bias. In other words, if > you remove the German language papers from the database you will > increase the impact of Germany in the rankings. > > This monumental discovery is reported in " First evidence of serious > language-bias in the use of citation analysis for the evaluation of > national science systems." Research Evaluation v.9(2),p.155-6 (Aug. > 2000). This provocative title is an implicit criticism of citation > analysis, but in fact it is simply of way of saying-- do citation > analysis our way. > > Regardless of the mischievous titling of the paper the main > observation that must be made with respect to the use of any > comprehensive literature database. The more inclusive it is of third > world and non-English language publications, and therefore presumably > better for information retrieval purposes, the lower will be the > overall impact for the countries involved. > > They also suggest that there is a bias in computing the overall impact > of US and UK output because there are no non-English journals. > However, they fail to point out that because ISI serves the interests > of librarians and scientist users there is a substantial coverage of > low impact English language publications in all fields, many of which > are in fact local as e.g. the Texas Journal of Science. Eugene > Garfield > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- > > Eugene Garfield, Ph.D. E-mail: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu > Telephone: (215)243-2205 // Fax: (215)387-1266 > Web site: www.eugenegarfield.org > President, American Society for Information Science & Technology > (ASIS&T) - www.asis.org > Chairman Emeritus, ISI, 3501 Market St , Philadelphia, PA 19104-3389 > www.isinet.com > Pres.,Ed.-in-Chief, The Scientist, 3600 Market St , Philadelphia, PA > 19104-2645 > www.the-scientist.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: Michel J. Menou [mailto:Michel.Menou at WANADOO.FR] > Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 10:31 AM > To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu > Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor in Brazil > > Since not everybody on the list might be concerned with the use of > citations and IF in research evaluation in countries and fields which > do > not belong to the big league, I'd rather refer to the work of the > late > Mike Moravcsick and follow up efforts as reflected in the following > publications: > > Moravcsik, M. J., (ed.). "Strengthening the coverage of > Third World Science. The bibliographic indicators of the Third > World's contribution to science. Deliberations, conclusions and > initiatives of an ad-hoc international task force for assessing the > scientific output of the Third World. Eugene, OR., Institute of > Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, 1986. > > Arvanitis, Rigas; Gaillard, Jacques, (eds.). Les indicateurs de > science > pour les pays en developpement. Science indicators for developing > countries. Proceedings of the International conference on science > indicators for developing countries; Paris, 15-19 October 1990. > Paris, > ORSTOM Editions, 1992. > > The leap on the issue of imperialism simply referred to the fact that > when > a measure is built on the basis of the achievements, needs and choices > of > the more powerful, applying it indiscriminately to all others, > including > the less served, is an imposition. > This is why the production of local resources is so important. A good > example is SciELO (www.scielo.br) > > At 15:38 09/09/00 -0400, Gene Garfield wrote: > > >Here is the list of 17 journals from Brazil covered in the 1999 > Journal > >Citation Reports. But I don't quite understand its relevance to the > >comments that follow. In general, the more local low impact journals > that > >are included in the calculation of impact, the lower will be the > overall > >impact of that country's impact. snip > Sure. Thus Botswana will lag far behind Norway, even in Forestry. So > what? > Do they play in the same league? Do they have the same individual > objectives and social role? If at least country rankings would be > corrected > on the basis of the number of active scientists, with some coefficient > for > their budgets. > > >snip > > Michel > > PS By the way, it is fair to mention that ISI supported part of the > activities undertaken by the task force assembled by Mike Moravcsik. > We > even had a party at Gene's place. -- ************************************************************ Isidro F. AGUILLO isidro at cindoc.csic.es ------------------------------------------------------------ CINDOC-CSIC Tel: +34-91-563.54.82 Joaquin Costa, 22 Fax: +34-91-564.26.44 28002 Madrid. ESPA?A/SPAIN Editor Cybermetrics (http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics) ************************************************************ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrichard at UCLA.EDU Thu Sep 14 11:59:04 2000 From: jrichard at UCLA.EDU (Dr. John V. Richardson Jr.) Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 08:59:04 -0700 Subject: Impact Factor and ISI Message-ID: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor and ISIHelen, I think ISI's JCR plays a valuable role in many scientific fields. Having followed it as editor of LQ, I have noticed certain things about it that made me passingly curious, but recently I started a study of leading as well as international LIS journals. I would really like to see operational definitions for how articles are counted because I have found inconsistencies in JCR. Here is what I finally decided to do; perhaps it will help you and others in their own studies: 1) Total number of major (main, full-length) articles per year (based on typography): a) No annotated, classified (or otherwise) bibliographies, notable documents or reviews of reference sources b) No editorials or guest editorials, symposia, research in brief, critical reviews, in memoriam (even with citations or references), introductions to special issues, brief or shorter communications, columns, conference reports, critical review articles, notes, opinion pieces, comments or letters or responses, etc. c) Book reviews are not counted d) Count "Interviews" when accompanied with notes or references Best wishes, JRjr ----- Original Message ----- From: Atkins, Helen To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 8:07 AM Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor and ISI ISI has been producing the JCR since 1975. The 2000 edition, which will be distributed next summer, will be its "silver anniversary" edition. While the product has developed over the years in terms of being offered in different formats (print, fiche, CD, Web), its content has not. Earlier this year, I was given production responsibility for the JCR, and in that role, one of my strategic goals is to create a plan for future development of the product *content*. I can, of course, make no promises about what changes may be made, but it is my intention to survey the main groups of users (bibliometric researchers, publishers, administrators, and librarians) before making any recommendations. We will most likely schedule a series of group discussions next spring. Until then, please rest assured that I will continue to follow all the discussions on this list (and ISSI), although I may not always be able to respond. Helen Atkins ************************************************** Helen Barsky Atkins Director, Database Development ISI 3501 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 215.386.0100 x1218 215.387.4706 (Fax) helen.atkins at isinet.com ************************************************** -----Original Message----- From: Isidro F. Aguillo [mailto:isidro at CINDOC.CSIC.ES] Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 4:34 AM To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor in Germany and other non-Englishcountries PLEA FOR A NEW IMPACT FACTOR This is very important topic for our discipline. I do not think the primary problem is with the geographical coverage of the Citation Indexes family and the scarce representation of non-english speaking journals. **Obviously**, I would like to see a better coverage of Third world countries and more spanish, french or german-language journals, but as there is (now???): - evidence against the effect of adding "second level" journals to global perfomance of the countries, - the selection criteria for additional titles is matter of debate and, - last, but not least, it is (very??) expensive to add many more periodicals, I suggest a different (more scientometric?? and commercial!!) approach. Several authors pointed the problem is not with SCI and family of databases, but with the rankinkgs of the JCR and specially with the Impact Factor indicator. The indiscrimate use of IF, a fact every scientometrician has warned about, is surely behind some of the biases about "adequate" coverage of SCI+SSCI+AHCI. During last decades several shortcommings of IF has been pointed and alternative indexes has been suggested but ISI has never adopted any of the suggested changes. As some of the proposals are mainly academic exercises difficult to implement, I could understand ISI's attitude. But there are, at least, several changes that are very EASY and ECONOMICAL to make and they could improve significantly IF value. The proposal is to generate annual JCR with a different set of indexes including a new impact factor (NIF) with - an expanded citation window (three or, better, four year period, not more), - excluding author self-citations and - using a more restricted set of document types. A second impact factor adjusting the values according discipline (CIF) is becoming popular among scientometrics and it must be added. The other statistics such as the immediacy or half-life indexes are seldom used (I do not remember anybody using them ...). There are several advantages for these new indexes. They are very easy to calculate, so ISI do not need to change the way they compilate JCR. Some other improvements could be added, but they are not "mandatory" (mainly related with quality evaluation of the source database and the classification of the journals by discipline). During two or three years the annual JCR could provide both old and new IFs, then only the new scheme. But it will be needed a product to cover back years period with the new indexes. A **eighties+nineties combined new fashion JCR** will be probably a "best seller" for ISI, so the additional PROFIT they will obtain from it could help to change their mind about this proposal. For descriptive scientometrics this new product could open a "golden age" as new analysis need to be done. Perhaps the empirical evidence obtained could give new light to the country bias debate. An improved (corrected??) JCR is good news also for managers, politicians and other scientists. And it is a good COMMERCIAL opportunity for ISI! Note: This proposal is made from compilation of ideas from several authors. They publish even extensive empirical evidence and support. I acknowledge them for every point but I am unable to make a complete bibliography ;-). > "Garfield, Eugene" wrote: > > It seems that no matter what ISI does its coverage of countries for > which English is not the native language the word bias is used. Now > comes the latest report from our friends at Leiden University in which > it is claimed there is evidence of "serious language-bias in the use > of citation analysis for the evaluation of national science systems. > It seems that ISI covers too many German language publications. They > report the "first evidence" (sic!!) of such bias. In other words, if > you remove the German language papers from the database you will > increase the impact of Germany in the rankings. > > This monumental discovery is reported in " First evidence of serious > language-bias in the use of citation analysis for the evaluation of > national science systems." Research Evaluation v.9(2),p.155-6 (Aug. > 2000). This provocative title is an implicit criticism of citation > analysis, but in fact it is simply of way of saying-- do citation > analysis our way. > > Regardless of the mischievous titling of the paper the main > observation that must be made with respect to the use of any > comprehensive literature database. The more inclusive it is of third > world and non-English language publications, and therefore presumably > better for information retrieval purposes, the lower will be the > overall impact for the countries involved. > > They also suggest that there is a bias in computing the overall impact > of US and UK output because there are no non-English journals. > However, they fail to point out that because ISI serves the interests > of librarians and scientist users there is a substantial coverage of > low impact English language publications in all fields, many of which > are in fact local as e.g. the Texas Journal of Science. Eugene > Garfield > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Eugene Garfield, Ph.D. E-mail: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu > Telephone: (215)243-2205 // Fax: (215)387-1266 > Web site: www.eugenegarfield.org > President, American Society for Information Science & Technology > (ASIS&T) - www.asis.org > Chairman Emeritus, ISI, 3501 Market St , Philadelphia, PA 19104-3389 > www.isinet.com > Pres.,Ed.-in-Chief, The Scientist, 3600 Market St , Philadelphia, PA > 19104-2645 > www.the-scientist.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: Michel J. Menou [mailto:Michel.Menou at WANADOO.FR] > Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 10:31 AM > To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu > Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor in Brazil > > Since not everybody on the list might be concerned with the use of > citations and IF in research evaluation in countries and fields which > do > not belong to the big league, I'd rather refer to the work of the > late > Mike Moravcsick and follow up efforts as reflected in the following > publications: > > Moravcsik, M. J., (ed.). "Strengthening the coverage of > Third World Science. The bibliographic indicators of the Third > World's contribution to science. Deliberations, conclusions and > initiatives of an ad-hoc international task force for assessing the > scientific output of the Third World. Eugene, OR., Institute of > Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, 1986. > > Arvanitis, Rigas; Gaillard, Jacques, (eds.). Les indicateurs de > science > pour les pays en developpement. Science indicators for developing > countries. Proceedings of the International conference on science > indicators for developing countries; Paris, 15-19 October 1990. > Paris, > ORSTOM Editions, 1992. > > The leap on the issue of imperialism simply referred to the fact that > when > a measure is built on the basis of the achievements, needs and choices > of > the more powerful, applying it indiscriminately to all others, > including > the less served, is an imposition. > This is why the production of local resources is so important. A good > example is SciELO (www.scielo.br) > > At 15:38 09/09/00 -0400, Gene Garfield wrote: > > >Here is the list of 17 journals from Brazil covered in the 1999 > Journal > >Citation Reports. But I don't quite understand its relevance to the > >comments that follow. In general, the more local low impact journals > that > >are included in the calculation of impact, the lower will be the > overall > >impact of that country's impact. snip > Sure. Thus Botswana will lag far behind Norway, even in Forestry. So > what? > Do they play in the same league? Do they have the same individual > objectives and social role? If at least country rankings would be > corrected > on the basis of the number of active scientists, with some coefficient > for > their budgets. > > >snip > > Michel > > PS By the way, it is fair to mention that ISI supported part of the > activities undertaken by the task force assembled by Mike Moravcsik. > We > even had a party at Gene's place. -- ************************************************************ Isidro F. AGUILLO isidro at cindoc.csic.es ------------------------------------------------------------ CINDOC-CSIC Tel: +34-91-563.54.82 Joaquin Costa, 22 Fax: +34-91-564.26.44 28002 Madrid. ESPA?A/SPAIN Editor Cybermetrics (http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics) ************************************************************ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eackerma at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU Fri Sep 15 13:39:25 2000 From: eackerma at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (eackerma) Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 13:39:25 -0400 Subject: Revision of Impact Factors Message-ID: While I find the current discussion of ISI's Impact Factor quite interesting, I'm afraid that I will have to take issue with the (apparently) widely accepted notion that all self-citations should be omitted from any impact considerations. In particular the often unspoken, non-explicit assumption that any self-citation is automatically suspect as being primarily for self-aggrandisement. Self-citations seem to be automatically treated as if they somehow taint the scholarly record with inflated citation counts. Otherwise, why exclude them? Yet from what I have been able to find in the published literature, no one has found any empirical evidence to support this notion. Various rates of self-citations have been found, but little or no empirical linkage with nefarious efforts to artificially inflate the citation record. Much supposition and speculation, but little evidence. What the automatic exclusion of self-citations *does* appear to do however is to unfairly penalize researchers publishing in newer or currently unfashionable fields, which tend to have by nature fewer researchers involved, hence less extensive literature to draw on as a source for non-self-citations. Also unfairly penalized are the researchers who built careers systemaically exporing a topic and writing a series of papers that build upon each other to form a body of relatively coherent knowledge, just as science (and other scholarship) is supposed to do. Therefore, until there are published studies in the literature that empirically demonstrate the necessity for doing so, removing all self-citations from the record before conducting a bibliometric evaluation of research performance seems to be an unnecessary activity. It only seems to add more work to the task of citation analysis for no good reason, while unfairly penalizing researchers in newer, highly specialized, or currently unpopular fields. Eric Ackermann School of Information Sciences University of Tennessee-Knoxville eackerma at utk.edu From michael.koenig at LIU.EDU Fri Sep 15 15:53:57 2000 From: michael.koenig at LIU.EDU (Michael Koenig) Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 15:53:57 -0400 Subject: Revision of Impact Factors Message-ID: Folks: I would like to echo Eric Ackerman's comments. I recollect (I"m afraid that I don't have a full bibliographic reference, shame on me) a study done in the late 1970s when I was at Mitre, done by Terence Kuch, then also at Mitre, in which he looked at peer ratings of professional expertise, and found that the best correlation he could find with a high peer rating was a high self citation rate. best, Mike Koenig -----Original Message----- From: eackerma To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Date: Friday, September 15, 2000 2:23 PM Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Revision of Impact Factors >While I find the current discussion of ISI's Impact Factor quite interesting, >I'm afraid that I will have to take issue with the (apparently) widely >accepted notion that all self-citations should be omitted from any impact >considerations. In particular the often unspoken, non-explicit assumption >that any self-citation is automatically suspect as being primarily for >self-aggrandisement. Self-citations seem to be automatically treated as if >they somehow taint the scholarly record with inflated citation counts. >Otherwise, why exclude them? Yet from what I have been able to find in the >published literature, no one has found any empirical evidence to support this >notion. Various rates of self-citations have been found, but little or no >empirical linkage with nefarious efforts to artificially inflate the citation >record. Much supposition and speculation, but little evidence. > >What the automatic exclusion of self-citations *does* appear to do however is >to unfairly penalize researchers publishing in newer or currently >unfashionable fields, which tend to have by nature fewer researchers involved, >hence less extensive literature to draw on as a source for non-self-citations. >Also unfairly penalized are the researchers who built careers systemaically >exporing a topic and writing a series of papers that build upon each other to >form a body of relatively coherent knowledge, just as science (and other >scholarship) is supposed to do. > >Therefore, until there are published studies in the literature that >empirically demonstrate the necessity for doing so, removing all >self-citations from the record before conducting a bibliometric evaluation of >research performance seems to be an unnecessary activity. It only seems to add >more work to the task of citation analysis for no good reason, while unfairly >penalizing researchers in newer, highly specialized, or currently unpopular >fields. > >Eric Ackermann >School of Information Sciences >University of Tennessee-Knoxville >eackerma at utk.edu From smaritch at ROCKETMAIL.COM Sun Sep 17 14:04:47 2000 From: smaritch at ROCKETMAIL.COM (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sinisa=20Maricic?=) Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 11:04:47 -0700 Subject: SIGMETRICS Digest - 14 Sep 2000 to 15 Sep 2000 (#2000-131) Message-ID: --- Automatic digest processor wrote: > There are 2 messages totalling 117 lines in this issue. > > Topics of the day: > > 1. Revision of Impact Factors (2) > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 13:39:25 -0400 > From: eackerma > Subject: Revision of Impact Factors > > While I find the current discussion of ISI's Impact Factor quite > interesting, > I'm afraid that I will have to take issue with the (apparently) > widely > accepted notion that all self-citations should be omitted from any > impact considerations........................ ..................................................................... > Therefore, until there are published studies in the literature that > empirically demonstrate the necessity for doing so, removing all > self-citations from the record before conducting a bibliometric > evaluation of > research performance seems to be an unnecessary activity. It only > seems to add > more work to the task of citation analysis for no good reason, > while unfairly > penalizing researchers in newer, highly specialized, or currently > unpopular > fields. > > Eric Ackermann > School of Information Sciences > University of Tennessee-Knoxville > eackerma at utk.edu > > ------------------------------ In response to the beginning and the end of Eric Ackerman's message, I would comment as follows. The selfcitations are of two kinds. (i) When authors cite their own published work, irrespective of the source journals, and (ii) when there are citations to the same journal in articles published in it. Let me call (i) "authors selfcitations", and (ii) "journal selfcitations". (i) In case of authors selfcitations one must certainly allow for autors' necessity to "keep track" of her/his earlier publications. But certainly there must be a limit to it. (Incidentally - is there any analysis about the context type of authors selfcitations?) As far as something in one's last paper has to be backed by explanations already given in earlir publications - the authors selfcitations are clearly indispensible. However, once decided to use citation counting to e v a l u a t e individual s c i e n t i f i c input to the world knowledge, the aim is to find out to what extent that individual's work has been referred to by his/her PEERS in THEIR publications. (Some like to name this "impact", I don't.) Obviously, the authors selfcitations should be excluded for evaluative purposes. (ii) Journal selfcitations are of interest in journals e v a l u a t i o n (studies), a topic of particular importance to which I shall come in another comment. Suffice here to say that while journal selfcitations should NOT be excluded, such data, recorded specifically as kind of a "claustrophobic" index, ought to be analysed in comparing journals, bearing in mind, of course, that there are new or exotic fields of research with a very limited number of source journals. Yours in discourse, Sinisa __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ From eackerma at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU Mon Sep 18 10:51:38 2000 From: eackerma at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (eackerma) Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 10:51:38 -0400 Subject: Revision of Impact Factors Message-ID: Excellent response! I amend my previous comments to apply only to the discussion of author self-citations in the context of efforts to measure or evalutate research performance or productivity. As an aside, I wonder if we as bibliometricians, in our rush to change the two-year citation window used by ISI to calculate the Impact Factor, have given due consideration to the potential lost of comparability? For all its faults, real and imagined, at least the ISI Impact Factor as currently calculated provides some sort of standard that allows comparability between the results of various studies. The more special cases, ad hoc adjustments, and other individualized tinkering that is done to the Impact Factor's calculation, the less comparable the end results are. This is particularly a problem when one is using citation anlysis as part of a larger study examining research performance and productivity, which to have meaningful results, involves some kind of comparative measures. All of which, of course, leads to the broader issue of a lack of some sort of standardized bibliometric measures in general... Eric Ackermann School of Information Sciences University of Tennessee-Knoxville eackerma at utk.edu >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 13:39:25 -0400 >> From: eackerma >> Subject: Revision of Impact Factors >> >> While I find the current discussion of ISI's Impact Factor quite >> interesting, >> I'm afraid that I will have to take issue with the (apparently) >> widely >> accepted notion that all self-citations should be omitted from any >> impact considerations........................ >.................................................................... >> Therefore, until there are published studies in the literature that >> empirically demonstrate the necessity for doing so, removing all >> self-citations from the record before conducting a bibliometric >> evaluation of >> research performance seems to be an unnecessary activity. It only >> seems to add >> more work to the task of citation analysis for no good reason, >> while unfairly >> penalizing researchers in newer, highly specialized, or currently >> unpopular >> fields. >> >> Eric Ackermann >> School of Information Sciences >> University of Tennessee-Knoxville >> eackerma at utk.edu >> >> ------------------------------ > >In response to the beginning and the end of Eric Ackerman's message, >I would comment as follows. > >The selfcitations are of two kinds. (i) When authors cite their own >published work, irrespective of the source journals, and (ii) when >there are citations to the same journal in articles published in it. > >Let me call (i) "authors selfcitations", and (ii) "journal >selfcitations". > >(i) In case of authors selfcitations one must certainly allow for >autors' necessity to "keep track" of her/his earlier publications. >But certainly there must be a limit to it. (Incidentally - is there >any analysis about the context type of authors selfcitations?) As far >as something in one's last paper has to be backed by explanations >already given in earlir publications - the authors selfcitations are >clearly indispensible. > >However, once decided to use citation counting to e v a l u a t e >individual s c i e n t i f i c input to the world knowledge, the >aim is to find out to what extent that individual's work has been >referred to by his/her PEERS in THEIR publications. (Some like to >name this "impact", I don't.) Obviously, the authors selfcitations >should be excluded for evaluative purposes. > >(ii) Journal selfcitations are of interest in journals e v a l u a t >i o n (studies), a topic of particular importance to which I shall >come in another comment. > >Suffice here to say that while journal selfcitations should NOT be >excluded, such data, recorded specifically as kind of a >"claustrophobic" index, ought to be analysed in comparing journals, >bearing in mind, of course, that there are new or exotic fields of >research with a very limited number of source journals. > >Yours in discourse, >Sinisa > > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! >http://mail.yahoo.com/ > >------------------------------ > >End of SIGMETRICS Digest - 15 Sep 2000 to 17 Sep 2000 (#2000-132) >***************************************************************** From David.Watkins at SOLENT.AC.UK Mon Sep 18 20:00:54 2000 From: David.Watkins at SOLENT.AC.UK (David Watkins) Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 01:00:54 +0100 Subject: David Watkins/SBS/Southampton Institute is out of the office. Message-ID: I will be out of the office from 17/09/2000 until 02/10/2000. This is an automated response. If appropriate, I will respond to your message when I return. From isidro at CINDOC.CSIC.ES Tue Sep 19 04:04:30 2000 From: isidro at CINDOC.CSIC.ES (Isidro F. Aguillo) Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 10:04:30 +0200 Subject: Revision of Impact Factors Message-ID: I am very pleased with the wide range of commentaries of other colleagues about the proposal for a new IF and especially with the open mind of the ISI managers. I agree that it is very helpful to discuss in depth the details before making changes. But it is important to say that the main reason to suggest an improvement of IF is not related (directly) with the needs of bibliometricians but with the abuse and misunderstandings of the rankings by general R&D community (For example, social and humanities researchers favour an extended citation window). On the other side, obviously, as scientometrician I would like to see an added value JCR. If more information is provided by JCR, including new indexes, recalculating old ones and perhaps splitting others, then our work for next years is guaranteed. Regarding comparative purposes, the answer is simply: Provide also the old IF. The length of the current rankings of 1999 SCI JCR is only about 60 pages, so increasing booklet size do not seem a major problem. ** If ISI will make any changes to JCR, then both roles need to be addressed, but they are two different problems and the discussions would considerer such differences. The upper limit is to keep easy the way the indexes are calculated, but the proposal intends a higher lower limit, increasing the number of indexes to be provided** Consequences. Regarding the original topic about country bias it is impossible to say in advance if more non-English journals could be added, but we will have new, improved and more data to re-evaluate the "tail" (journals with lower IF) where many of those journals are located. eackerma wrote: > > Excellent response! I amend my previous comments to apply only to the > discussion of author self-citations in the context of efforts to measure or > evalutate research performance or productivity. > > As an aside, I wonder if we as bibliometricians, in our rush to change the > two-year citation window used by ISI to calculate the Impact Factor, have > given due consideration to the potential lost of comparability? For all its > faults, real and imagined, at least the ISI Impact Factor as currently > calculated provides some sort of standard that allows comparability between > the results of various studies. The more special cases, ad hoc adjustments, > and other individualized tinkering that is done to the Impact Factor's > calculation, the less comparable the end results are. This is particularly a > problem when one is using citation anlysis as part of a larger study examining > research performance and productivity, which to have meaningful results, > involves some kind of comparative measures. All of which, of course, leads to > the broader issue of a lack of some sort of standardized bibliometric measures > in general... > > Eric Ackermann > School of Information Sciences > University of Tennessee-Knoxville > eackerma at utk.edu > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> > >> Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 13:39:25 -0400 > >> From: eackerma > >> Subject: Revision of Impact Factors > >> > >> While I find the current discussion of ISI's Impact Factor quite > >> interesting, > >> I'm afraid that I will have to take issue with the (apparently) > >> widely > >> accepted notion that all self-citations should be omitted from any > >> impact considerations........................ > >.................................................................... > >> Therefore, until there are published studies in the literature that > >> empirically demonstrate the necessity for doing so, removing all > >> self-citations from the record before conducting a bibliometric > >> evaluation of > >> research performance seems to be an unnecessary activity. It only > >> seems to add > >> more work to the task of citation analysis for no good reason, > >> while unfairly > >> penalizing researchers in newer, highly specialized, or currently > >> unpopular > >> fields. > >> > >> Eric Ackermann > >> School of Information Sciences > >> University of Tennessee-Knoxville > >> eackerma at utk.edu > >> > >> ------------------------------ > > > >In response to the beginning and the end of Eric Ackerman's message, > >I would comment as follows. > > > >The selfcitations are of two kinds. (i) When authors cite their own > >published work, irrespective of the source journals, and (ii) when > >there are citations to the same journal in articles published in it. > > > >Let me call (i) "authors selfcitations", and (ii) "journal > >selfcitations". > > > >(i) In case of authors selfcitations one must certainly allow for > >autors' necessity to "keep track" of her/his earlier publications. > >But certainly there must be a limit to it. (Incidentally - is there > >any analysis about the context type of authors selfcitations?) As far > >as something in one's last paper has to be backed by explanations > >already given in earlir publications - the authors selfcitations are > >clearly indispensible. > > > >However, once decided to use citation counting to e v a l u a t e > >individual s c i e n t i f i c input to the world knowledge, the > >aim is to find out to what extent that individual's work has been > >referred to by his/her PEERS in THEIR publications. (Some like to > >name this "impact", I don't.) Obviously, the authors selfcitations > >should be excluded for evaluative purposes. > > > >(ii) Journal selfcitations are of interest in journals e v a l u a t > >i o n (studies), a topic of particular importance to which I shall > >come in another comment. > > > >Suffice here to say that while journal selfcitations should NOT be > >excluded, such data, recorded specifically as kind of a > >"claustrophobic" index, ought to be analysed in comparing journals, > >bearing in mind, of course, that there are new or exotic fields of > >research with a very limited number of source journals. > > > >Yours in discourse, > >Sinisa > > > > > >__________________________________________________ > >Do You Yahoo!? > >Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! > >http://mail.yahoo.com/ > > > >------------------------------ > > > >End of SIGMETRICS Digest - 15 Sep 2000 to 17 Sep 2000 (#2000-132) > >***************************************************************** -- ************************************************************ Isidro F. AGUILLO isidro at cindoc.csic.es ------------------------------------------------------------ CINDOC-CSIC Tel: +34-91-563.54.82 Joaquin Costa, 22 Fax: +34-91-564.26.44 28002 Madrid. ESPA?A/SPAIN Editor Cybermetrics (http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics) ************************************************************ From Pedro Tue Sep 19 07:39:58 2000 From: Pedro (Pedro) Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 13:39:58 +0200 Subject: Revision of Impact Factors Message-ID: "All of which, of course, leads to the broader issue of a lack of some sort of standardized bibliometric measures in general..." This is true. The Impact Factor should be conceptualzed in a theoretical framework where measure makes sense. An instrument for measurement it is required. Papers: "The Rasch Model. Measuring The Impact of Scientific Journals: Analitical Chemistry". JASIS 47(6):458-467, 1996. "The Diffusion of Scientific Journals Analyzed through Citations". JASIS 48(10):953-958, 1997. "Equating Research Production in Different Scientific fields" Information Processing & Management Vol. 34, No 4, pp. 465-470, 1998. are instances. Pedro Alvarez Professor School of Economics University of Extremadura. Spain At 10:51 18/09/00 -0400, you wrote: >Excellent response! I amend my previous comments to apply only to the >discussion of author self-citations in the context of efforts to measure or >evalutate research performance or productivity. > >As an aside, I wonder if we as bibliometricians, in our rush to change the >two-year citation window used by ISI to calculate the Impact Factor, have >given due consideration to the potential lost of comparability? For all its >faults, real and imagined, at least the ISI Impact Factor as currently >calculated provides some sort of standard that allows comparability between >the results of various studies. The more special cases, ad hoc adjustments, >and other individualized tinkering that is done to the Impact Factor's >calculation, the less comparable the end results are. This is particularly a >problem when one is using citation anlysis as part of a larger study examining >research performance and productivity, which to have meaningful results, >involves some kind of comparative measures. All of which, of course, leads to >the broader issue of a lack of some sort of standardized bibliometric measures >in general... > >Eric Ackermann >School of Information Sciences >University of Tennessee-Knoxville >eackerma at utk.edu > > > >>---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> >>> Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 13:39:25 -0400 >>> From: eackerma >>> Subject: Revision of Impact Factors >>> >>> While I find the current discussion of ISI's Impact Factor quite >>> interesting, >>> I'm afraid that I will have to take issue with the (apparently) >>> widely >>> accepted notion that all self-citations should be omitted from any >>> impact considerations........................ >>.................................................................... >>> Therefore, until there are published studies in the literature that >>> empirically demonstrate the necessity for doing so, removing all >>> self-citations from the record before conducting a bibliometric >>> evaluation of >>> research performance seems to be an unnecessary activity. It only >>> seems to add >>> more work to the task of citation analysis for no good reason, >>> while unfairly >>> penalizing researchers in newer, highly specialized, or currently >>> unpopular >>> fields. >>> >>> Eric Ackermann >>> School of Information Sciences >>> University of Tennessee-Knoxville >>> eackerma at utk.edu >>> >>> ------------------------------ >> >>In response to the beginning and the end of Eric Ackerman's message, >>I would comment as follows. >> >>The selfcitations are of two kinds. (i) When authors cite their own >>published work, irrespective of the source journals, and (ii) when >>there are citations to the same journal in articles published in it. >> >>Let me call (i) "authors selfcitations", and (ii) "journal >>selfcitations". >> >>(i) In case of authors selfcitations one must certainly allow for >>autors' necessity to "keep track" of her/his earlier publications. >>But certainly there must be a limit to it. (Incidentally - is there >>any analysis about the context type of authors selfcitations?) As far >>as something in one's last paper has to be backed by explanations >>already given in earlir publications - the authors selfcitations are >>clearly indispensible. >> >>However, once decided to use citation counting to e v a l u a t e >>individual s c i e n t i f i c input to the world knowledge, the >>aim is to find out to what extent that individual's work has been >>referred to by his/her PEERS in THEIR publications. (Some like to >>name this "impact", I don't.) Obviously, the authors selfcitations >>should be excluded for evaluative purposes. >> >>(ii) Journal selfcitations are of interest in journals e v a l u a t >>i o n (studies), a topic of particular importance to which I shall >>come in another comment. >> >>Suffice here to say that while journal selfcitations should NOT be >>excluded, such data, recorded specifically as kind of a >>"claustrophobic" index, ought to be analysed in comparing journals, >>bearing in mind, of course, that there are new or exotic fields of >>research with a very limited number of source journals. >> >>Yours in discourse, >>Sinisa >> >> >>__________________________________________________ >>Do You Yahoo!? >>Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! >>http://mail.yahoo.com/ >> >>------------------------------ >> >>End of SIGMETRICS Digest - 15 Sep 2000 to 17 Sep 2000 (#2000-132) >>***************************************************************** > > --------------------------------- Pedro ?lvarez Departamento de Economia Aplicada y Organizacion de Empresas Facultad de Ciencias Economicas y Empresariales Universidad de Extremadura Avda de Elvas s/n 06071-BADAJOZ SPAIN Tlfno Fax 924-289556 E-mail:palvarez at unex.es --------------------------------- From wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK Thu Sep 21 01:46:28 2000 From: wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK (wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK) Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 13:46:28 +0800 Subject: Official Launch of Wudo.net Message-ID: Welcome to the official launch of Wudo.net Dear Friend, Wudo.net is an online portal of Marital Arts products. Products include magazines, books, figurines and many priceless collectable items available. All interested distributors and general public customers are welcome! Please visit us for more information and contact details on the various products available. Best Regards, Wudo.net ? * To cancel this mailing service, please reply and type "remove" in the subject field -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From familyburrell at ENTERPRISE.NET Thu Sep 21 18:17:26 2000 From: familyburrell at ENTERPRISE.NET (Quentin L. Burrell) Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 23:17:26 +0100 Subject: remove Message-ID: Official Launch of Wudo.net ----- Original Message ----- From: wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Sent: 21 September 2000 06:46 Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Official Launch of Wudo.net Welcome to the official launch of Wudo.net Dear Friend, Wudo.net is an online portal of Marital Arts products. Products include magazines, books, figurines and many priceless collectable items available. All interested distributors and general public customers are welcome! Please visit us for more information and contact details on the various products available. Best Regards, Wudo.net ? * To cancel this mailing service, please reply and type "remove" in the subject field -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mueller at UNB.BR Sat Sep 23 05:37:36 2000 From: mueller at UNB.BR (Suzana Pinheiro Machado Mueller) Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 06:37:36 -0300 Subject: remove In-Reply-To: <000201c024bf$01d71440$9a74a1d4@enterprise.net> Message-ID: At 23:17 21/09/2000 +0100, you wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- From: wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK >To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Sent: 21 September 2000 06:46 >Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Official Launch of Wudo.net > Welcome to the official launch of Wudo.net Dear Friend, >Wudo.net All interested distributors and general public customers are >welcome! Please visit us for more information and contact details on >the various products available. Best Regards, Wudo.net ?@ * To >cancel this mailing service, please reply and type "remove" in the >subject field > Suzana P M Mueller, PhD Professora Titular Departamento de Ciencia da Informacao e Documentacao Universidade de Brasilia Fax 0613684537 From lismcgr at MA.ULTRANET.COM Mon Sep 25 15:12:50 2000 From: lismcgr at MA.ULTRANET.COM (William E. McGrath) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 15:12:50 -0400 Subject: Official Launch of Wudo.net Message-ID: remove wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK wrote: > > [Image] > > Welcome to the official launch of Wudo.net > > Dear Friend, > > Wudo.net is an online portal of Marital Arts products. Products > include magazines, books, figurines and many priceless collectable > items available. All interested distributors and general public > customers are welcome! > > Please visit us for more information and contact details on the > various products available. > > Best Regards, > > Wudo.net > > ?@ > > * To cancel this mailing service, please reply and type "remove" in > the subject field From lismcgr at MA.ULTRANET.COM Mon Sep 25 15:13:18 2000 From: lismcgr at MA.ULTRANET.COM (William E. McGrath) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 15:13:18 -0400 Subject: remove Message-ID: wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK wrote: > > [Image] > > Welcome to the official launch of Wudo.net > > Dear Friend, > > Wudo.net is an online portal of Marital Arts products. Products > include magazines, books, figurines and many priceless collectable > items available. All interested distributors and general public > customers are welcome! > > Please visit us for more information and contact details on the > various products available. > > Best Regards, > > Wudo.net > > ?@ > > * To cancel this mailing service, please reply and type "remove" in > the subject field From jrichard at UCLA.EDU Mon Sep 25 15:44:22 2000 From: jrichard at UCLA.EDU (Dr. John V. Richardson Jr.) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 12:44:22 -0700 Subject: Official Launch of Wudo.net Message-ID: Can we get this guy off the group? JRjr ----- Original Message ----- From: "William E. McGrath" To: Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 12:12 PM Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Official Launch of Wudo.net > remove > > wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK wrote: > > > > [Image] > > > > Welcome to the official launch of Wudo.net > > > > Dear Friend, > > > > Wudo.net is an online portal of Marital Arts products. Products > > include magazines, books, figurines and many priceless collectable > > items available. All interested distributors and general public > > customers are welcome! > > > > Please visit us for more information and contact details on the > > various products available. > > > > Best Regards, > > > > Wudo.net > > > > ?@ > > > > * To cancel this mailing service, please reply and type "remove" in > > the subject field From gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU Mon Sep 25 16:39:45 2000 From: gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 16:39:45 -0400 Subject: spam Message-ID: Hi everyone, I've re-set the listserv settings so that only subscribers can post to the list. That won't eliminate all of the spam - spammers have developed programs that subscribe, spam, and then unsubscribe. But it will help. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 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 waldgueller at INTERLINK.COM.AR Mon Sep 25 16:52:55 2000 From: waldgueller at INTERLINK.COM.AR (Ana Gueller) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 17:52:55 -0300 Subject: remove In-Reply-To: <39CFA3B2.FB42A218@ma.ultranet.com> Message-ID: > De: "William E. McGrath" > Organizaci?n: The Rest of the Way > Responder a: ASIS Special Interest Group on Metrics > > Fecha: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 15:12:50 -0400 > Para: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu > Asunto: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Official Launch of Wudo.net > > remove > > wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK wrote: >> >> [Image] >> >> Welcome to the official launch of Wudo.net >> >> Dear Friend, >> >> Wudo.net is an online portal of Marital Arts products. Products >> include magazines, books, figurines and many priceless collectable >> items available. All interested distributors and general public >> customers are welcome! >> >> Please visit us for more information and contact details on the >> various products available. >> >> Best Regards, >> >> Wudo.net >> >> ?@ >> >> * To cancel this mailing service, please reply and type "remove" in >> the subject field From waldgueller at INTERLINK.COM.AR Mon Sep 25 16:52:14 2000 From: waldgueller at INTERLINK.COM.AR (Ana Gueller) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 17:52:14 -0300 Subject: remove In-Reply-To: <39CFA3CE.DF3BD801@ma.ultranet.com> Message-ID: > De: "William E. McGrath" > Organizaci?n: The Rest of the Way > Responder a: ASIS Special Interest Group on Metrics > > Fecha: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 15:13:18 -0400 > Para: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu > Asunto: [SIGMETRICS] remove > > wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK wrote: >> >> [Image] >> >> Welcome to the official launch of Wudo.net >> >> Dear Friend, >> >> Wudo.net is an online portal of Marital Arts products. Products >> include magazines, books, figurines and many priceless collectable >> items available. All interested distributors and general public >> customers are welcome! >> >> Please visit us for more information and contact details on the >> various products available. >> >> Best Regards, >> >> Wudo.net >> >> ?@ >> >> * To cancel this mailing service, please reply and type "remove" in >> the subject field From waldgueller at INTERLINK.COM.AR Mon Sep 25 16:55:19 2000 From: waldgueller at INTERLINK.COM.AR (Ana Gueller) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 17:55:19 -0300 Subject: Modular Bibliometric Information System with Proprietary Software In-Reply-To: <200009251706.NAA30175@infomed.sld.cu> Message-ID: Pleas, which is the way to unsuscribe to SIGMETRICS? thanks. ana gueller > De: "Instituto Finlay." > Responder a: ASIS Special Interest Group on Metrics > > Fecha: Sat, 25 Sep 0100 17:06:46 +0000 > Para: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu > Asunto: [SIGMETRICS] Modular Bibliometric Information System with Proprietary > Software > > Modular Bibliometric Information System with Proprietary Software > (MOBIS-ProSoft): a versatile approach to bibliometric research tools. > Gilberto Sotolongo-Aguilar et al > http://libres.curtin.edu.au/ > This article was originally published in > LIBRES: Library and Information Science > Electronic Journal (ISSN 1058-6768) September 30, 2000 > Volume 10 Issue 2. > Modular Bibliometric Information System with Proprietary Software > (MOBIS-ProSoft): a versatile approach to bibliometric research tools. > Gilberto Sotolongo-Aguilar et al > http://libres.curtin.edu.au/ > This article was originally published in > LIBRES: Library and Information Science > Electronic Journal (ISSN 1058-6768) September 30, 2000 > Volume 10 Issue 2. From gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU Mon Sep 25 18:34:33 2000 From: gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 18:34:33 -0400 Subject: van Raan, R&D evaluation at the beginning of the new century Message-ID: AUTHOR'S E-MAIL: vanraan at cwts.leidenuniv.nl Title : R&D evaluation at the beginning of the new century Author : van Raan AFJ Journal : RESEARCH EVALUATION 9: (2) 81-86 AUG 2000 Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 10 Times Cited: 0 Abstract: The assessment of the socioeconomic impact of R&D is a crucial issue on science and technology policy, Following recent discussions in a special working group of the European Union, the main problems are sketched and then limits and opportunities are identified Elements for 'the wayforward' in this delicate matter are suggested. One is the application of objective, high-quality evaluation methods; a recent 'real- life' example, the application of an advanced bibliometric research performance evaluation and monitoring methodology, particularly designed for new, interdisciplinary, application-oriented research, is discussed. Addresses: van Raan AFJ, Leiden Univ, Ctr Sci & Technol Studies, Wassenaarseweg 52, POB 9555, NL-2300 RB Leiden, Netherlands. Leiden Univ, Ctr Sci & Technol Studies, NL-2300 RB Leiden, Netherlands. Publisher: BEECH TREE PUBLISHING, GUILDFORD IDS Number: 344UX ISSN: 0958-2029 Copyright ? 2000 Institute for Scientific Information Please visit their website at www.isinet.com From gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU Mon Sep 25 18:37:45 2000 From: gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 18:37:45 -0400 Subject: ABS: Cronin, Semiotics and evaluative bibliometrics Message-ID: E-MAIL ADDRESS : bcronin at indiana.edu TITLE : Semiotics and evaluative bibliometrics AUTHOR: Cronin B JOURNAL JOURNAL OF DOCUMENTATION 56: (4) 440-453 JUL 2000 Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 47 Times Cited: 0 Abstract: The reciprocal relationship between bibliographic references and citations in the context of the scholarly communication system is examined. Semiotic analysis of referencing behaviours and citation counting reveals the complexity of prevailing sign systems and associated symbolic practices. KeyWords Plus: ASSESSMENT EXERCISE RATINGS, INFORMATION-SCIENCE, CITATION ANALYSIS, COMMUNICATION, DOCUMENTS, GENETICS, COUNTS Addresses: Cronin B, Indiana Univ, Sch Lib & Informat Sci, Bloomington, IN 47401 USA. Indiana Univ, Sch Lib & Informat Sci, Bloomington, IN 47401 USA. Publisher: ASLIB, LONDON IDS Number: 326VD Copyright ? 2000 Institute for Scientific Information EXCERPT FROM PAPER : CONCLUSIONS What semiotics offers the bibliometric research community is a supra-disciplinary suite of insights and exegetical tools (such as the sign triads in Figures 1-5) to explore better the indexical significance of bibliographic references and citations, contextualised and decontextualised, within the scholarly communication system, so well described by Meadows [47]. Commercial (and other [48]} citation indexes have liberated references from their textual hosts, in the process creating a marketplace for a new species of sign -- the citation. An understanding of semiotic principles may be one way of helping the bibliometrics / scientometrics research community develop greater sensitivity to the variable symbolic significance of the signs they routinely manipulate and treat as quasi-objective indicators of quality, impact and esteem. Semiotics cannot provide a unifying theory for understanding the intentional and extensional significance of citation, but it does offer a framework within which to examine specific phenomena and reproducible practices and to assess the strengths and limitations of the competing theoretical models. (c) ISI, Reprinted with permission Please visit their website at www.isinet.com From leeuwen at CWTS.LEIDENUNIV.NL Wed Sep 27 03:20:52 2000 From: leeuwen at CWTS.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Thed van Leeuwen) Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 03:20:52 -0400 Subject: Reply to Re: [SIGMETRICS] Impact Factor in Germany and other non-English countries Message-ID: Dear colleagues, In the Sigmetrics mailing list we came across a reply by Eugene Garfield to our letter in Research Evaluation vol.9 (2), p. 155-6 (Aug. 2000), titled "First evidence of serious language-bias in the use of citation analysis for the evaluation of national science systems", authored by Th.N. van Leeuwen, H.F. Moed, R.J.W. Tijssen, M.S. Visser and A.F.J. van Raan. This research letter is an extract of a full paper related to a presentation given at the 6th International Conference on Science & Technology Indicators in Leiden in May 2000. Evidently, we cannot present in the letter all details of the presentation, nor the full paper. At the conference we presented results from studies, indicating that the impact scores of scientists from non-English speaking countries like Germany, France and Switzerland changed drastically when we excluded the ISI-covered publications written in other languages than English. This led to the conclusion that language of publication is an important aspect in citation analysis. Especially in the case of the comparison of national R&D systems, as this phenomenon causes significant changes in the rankings of countries. We did not find this phenomenon for just one Germany university or only one faculty/school within a single university (as reported in the Research Evaluation paper). The phenomenon described here was found for the entire biomedical research systems of Germany, France, and Switzerland, and to a lesser extent also for Italy, Spain and Japan. We think there are a number of misunderstandings. The first relates to the issue of the users of the ISI databases. Dr. Garfield states that these databases are used as literature search tools (for example by scientists and librarians), and therefore should not exclude non-English journal publications. Of course we are aware of this 'original' function of the ISI databases. Dr. Garfield argues that we propose to exclude these non-English publications from the ISI databases. This is obviously not the case. We merely emphasize that these databases are not only used as literature search tools, but more and more serve as a source for the calculation of research performance measures. And exactly here both worlds seem to intersect, namely where scientists and librarians also use journal impact measures, either for their publication strategy or their decision-making with respect to their journal collection. And it is precisely this mixture of applications that concerns us. The inclusion of certain journals and their characteristics on one level of use - literature search - might influence the use of the database for other purposes - performance assessment -. A second misunderstanding relates to Dr. Garfield's suggestion that what we essentially want to promote 'our way' of doing citation analysis. Unfortunately Dr. Garfield overlooks the point of our self-criticism here. Until now, we have always analysed the publication data from non-English Western countries such as Germany, France, without taking into account differences in impact scores, caused by publication language. What we suggest in our recent paper is to be aware of these problems, and most certainly not to prescribe (if ever possible) to do it 'our way'. As impartial scientists, we merely stress the need to develop more appropriate research performance indicators. This causes new problems, like for example, how to deal with low impact English journals. This problem was explicitly stated at the abovementioned conference presentation, and definitely will lead to further research on this topic. A third issue relates to the interpretation by Dr. Garfield of the word 'bias'. What we try to achieve is to enlarge the awareness of people using ISI data (both in 'raw' form, as well as their 'derivatives' such as indicators) of the flaws related to this material. The fact that we use the material ourselves is the best evidence of the absolute unique value of the material. However, ISI database play a highly influential role in the world of science, and we feel it our task to improve and, if necessarily, criticize the material. In this particular case, we felt it our duty to report these findings, because it creates a new perspective on the comparison of national R&D systems, particularly of the countries in the Western world. "Bias" is therefore used to create the necessary awareness in the interpretation of impact scores based on publication sets that are basically different of nature. On behalf of the authors, Thed van Leeuwen, Centre for Science & Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands A pre-print of the paper related to the conference presentation is presented at the CWTS website: http://cwts.leidenuniv.nl From isidro at CINDOC.CSIC.ES Wed Sep 27 05:12:51 2000 From: isidro at CINDOC.CSIC.ES (Isidro F. Aguillo) Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 11:12:51 +0200 Subject: Mirrowing individual scientometric contributions in the Cybermetrics site Message-ID: Mirrowing individual scientometric contributions in the Cybermetrics site After several periodic revisions of the links collected for the Cybermetrics pages devoted to directory of resources, we realised the large number of relevant papers and other full-text documents that disappear from the Web due to unknown (and probably diverse) reasons. This is a well-known phenomenon that probably involves more than a 10% of the Web each year, but it is unfortunate in some cases as important data are lost due to factors external to authors' control. We wish to offer an especial mirrowing service in Cybermetrics for our colleagues under restricted conditions as follows: - The service is only open to finished documents (peer-reviewed or accepted final versions of articles and papers are preferred) ALREADY published in other site of the Web. - Each document will be archived as one pdf file (we can convert HTML files in acrobat pdf files). - This service is open to scientometric, bibliometric, informetric, cybermetric, and similar topics related papers. Those items will be referred from a secondary link in the corresponding Cybermetrics directories, but the PRIMARY link will be to the ORIGINAL source. - No formal consideration will be given to the items in the archive. Please, provide only those items without rights problems. We wish to emphasize the objective of making a permanent deposit to increase availability, not an alternative way of publishing. -- ************************************************************ Isidro F. AGUILLO isidro at cindoc.csic.es ------------------------------------------------------------ CINDOC-CSIC Tel: +34-91-563.54.82 Joaquin Costa, 22 Fax: +34-91-564.26.44 28002 Madrid. ESPA?A/SPAIN Editor Cybermetrics (http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics) ************************************************************ From pvcalarc at SATURN.VCU.EDU Wed Sep 27 09:51:32 2000 From: pvcalarc at SATURN.VCU.EDU (Pascal V. Calarco) Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:51:32 -0400 Subject: Fwd: Special Garfield Festschrift on Scientometrics Message-ID: SIGMETRICS readers may be interested in this note from Stevan Harnard on the VPIEJ-L list. Apologies for cross-posting duplication in advance. The Sept.10, 2000 issue of Current Science may be accessed at: http://www.iisc.ernet.in/~currsci/sep102000/contents.htm - pascal >X-Authentication-Warning: cogito.ecs.soton.ac.uk: harnad owned process >doing -bs >Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:45:06 +0100 >Reply-To: Stevan Harnad >Sender: Electronic Journal Publishing List >From: Stevan Harnad >Subject: Special Garfield Festschrift on Scientometrics >X-To: september98-forum at amsci-forum.amsci.org >X-cc: Elib List EJ , > Lib Serials list >To: VPIEJ-L at LISTSERV.VT.EDU > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >From: List Server >Reply-To: A discussion list for Library and Info Services in India > >To: LIS-FORUM at NCSI.IISC.ERNET.IN >Subject: Current Science (fwd) >Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 15:39:00 +0530 > >Current Science dated 10 September 2000 carries a special section on >scientometrics running to 49 pages. There are six articles. Authors include >Olle Persson, Alan Hedley, Peter Vinkler, Stevan Harnad, Jayashree and >Jinandra Doss. There is an editorial by Prof. P Balaram and a brief note on >Gene Garfield and the articles in the special section by Arunachalam. This >special section was brought out to honour Gene Garfield on his 75th >birthday (16 September). > >http://tejas.serc.iisc.ernet.in/~currsci/ > >Library and information professionals as well as research scientists may >find this issue interesting. > >Subbiah Arunachalam -+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+ Pascal V. Calarco, MLIS, AHIP Advanced Technologies Librarian, Assistant Professor Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences VCU Libraries Virginia Commonwealth University PO Box 980582 Richmond, VA ICQ #: 3736376 USA 23298-0582 voice: (804) 828-0626 e-mail: pvcalarc at vcu.edu fax: (804) 828-6089 http://saturn.vcu.edu/~pvcalarc/ -+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+-+t+ From michael.koenig at LIU.EDU Wed Sep 27 11:23:35 2000 From: michael.koenig at LIU.EDU (Michael Koenig) Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 11:23:35 -0400 Subject: Remove Message-ID: -----Original Message----- From: William E. McGrath To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Date: Monday, September 25, 2000 5:18 PM Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Official Launch of Wudo.net >remove > >wudo at HARBOURRING.COM.HK wrote: >> >> [Image] >> >> Welcome to the official launch of Wudo.net >> >> Dear Friend, >> >> Wudo.net is an online portal of Marital Arts products. Products >> include magazines, books, figurines and many priceless collectable >> items available. All interested distributors and general public >> customers are welcome! >> >> Please visit us for more information and contact details on the >> various products available. >> >> Best Regards, >> >> Wudo.net >> >> ?@ >> >> * To cancel this mailing service, please reply and type "remove" in >> the subject field From gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU Wed Sep 27 17:34:08 2000 From: gwhitney at UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 17:34:08 -0400 Subject: ABS: Wormell, Bibliomeetric Analysis of the Welfare State as a Research Phenomenon, Parts 1 and 2 Message-ID: From: Wormell Irene I. Wormell, "Bibliometric Analysis of the Welfare State as a Research Phenomenon". Scientometrics, 47(2000)2, pp.203-236 . The article is reporting the results of the first part of an extensive informetric analysis of the Welfare topic, carried out in 1998-99. The aim was to analyse the structure of the literature of international Welfare research, to provide a detailed picture of its basic theoretical and empirical concepts and the mutual relations existing between these concepts. The approach is novel in that through the application of quantitative (i.e. bibliometric) techniques it tries to reduce subjectivity in domain analysis and in the mapping of the developments and segmentation in special topical areas. The analysis used the technique of co-ordinated online searches in a cluster of international bibliographic databases in DIALOG. The relevant theoretical and empirical concepts have been structured in 13 sub-topics which have been in detail analysed, in three time intervals. Welfare State Social indicators Retrenchment Patriarchal State Altruism (solidarity) Marginalization Social insurance, safety net Unemployment benefit Keynesian economics Public economy Communitarism, pluralism, corporatism Public service delivery (health, education, children, elderly people) Public choice (privatization, licitation, evaluation, innovation in public services) By measuring trends and developments in the number of publications, term occurrences, similarity between the subject terms and formation of clusters among the subject segments, the analysis provides a comprehensive review of such a complex research field as the Welfare State is. The study, which primary aim is to improve the methodology of quantitative analysis in the so called "soft" sciences, will increase the interest among social scientists, scholars of the humanities and library and information science to use databases as analytical tools and to apply the modern text mining techniques for the extraction of knowledge from bibliographic data. I. Wormell, "Critical Aspects of the Danish Welfare State -As Revealed by Issue Tracking". Scientometrics, 47(20002, pp.237-250. This article constitutes the second part of the project entitled "Informetric Analysis of the Welfare Topic". The study applied and developed the methodology of issue tracking for "informetric studies" in the area of social sciences where metric techniques have been little used so far. Issue tracking and monitoring of literature are known methodologies in the area of science and technology, but due to the differences in the scientific communication, quantitative analysis in the "soft" sciences requires other techniques and research attitudes. It was aimed to explore these differences and improve the existing methodologies by applying them to another type of scientific communication - where the topics and their subject representations are often ambiguous, therefore, the accurate identification, selection and harmonisation of search terms are cornerstones of the analysis. The project aims to introduce and test the possibilities and limits of quantitative methods to unearth important past, current and future conditions related to the development of the Welfare concept in Denmark. This article is focusing on the methodology and does not attempt to provide explanations and interpretations of the topics analysed. In the project there have been involved information scientists and a panel of domain experts and other specialists. However, the dialogues and consultations with the expert panel ensure the inclusion of certain qualitative elements into the study. Using the issue tracking methodology the 13 selected topics (see above) were analysed in periods accross various types of the Danish national databases covering information about the research, implementation, press and legislation aspects. This is a useful methodology for following how a concept (originating from an innovation or a new idea) is moving through the path of various publication forms e.g., Theoretical research applied research techniques and engineering popular press and mass media legislation To provide a realistic and structured form for the study, the expert panel suggested to use the following three main points on the present criticism of the "Welfare State": Economic aspects, Can we afford it? Legitimacy, Does the people believe in it and how much do they support it? Functionality, How does it work? Thus, the paper trace the pattern of debate about the three main critical issues of the modern Welfare State in Denmark: economic aspects, legitimacy and functionality. The approach taken is novel in that it implements and tests issue tracking in this area of social sciences, and tries to reduce subjectivity in the analysis of trends influencing social policy and public opinion. The study aims to show how the emerging data and text mining techniques can be applied to integrate downloaded bibliographic data with other types of information in a strategic mix. In co-operation with the Institute for Future Studies, Denmark/Sweden, we are planning to continue the analyses of the information flow between research , media and the political system in order to show the gaps between the politicians? and the population?s opinion about the Welfare State in Denmark. This will be an extensive project where the informetric analyses, along with several other methods, will be used for mapping the differences in the opinion of the Danish people and the state. The final report is published in three volumes: Irene Wormell, Informetric Analysis of the Welfare State as a Research Phenomenon.Centre for Informetric Studies, Copenhagen, 1999. (CIS Report 8).Vol. I. General description and the results of the project. 77 p. Vol. II. Methodology. 28 p. Vol III. Resum?. 28 p. Contact: Centre for Informetric Studies, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Birketinget 6, DK-2300 Copenhagen, Denmark. Tel: +45 32 58 60 66; Fax:: +45 32 84 02 01 http://www.db.dk/cis ----------------------------------------------------------------------- From helen.atkins at ISINET.COM Thu Sep 28 11:37:57 2000 From: helen.atkins at ISINET.COM (Atkins, Helen) Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 11:37:57 -0400 Subject: Press Release - Dr. Eugene Garfield Celebrates 75 Years Message-ID: Please post the following press release. Note that a plain text version of the table of contents for The Web of Knowledge: A Festschrift in Honor of Eugene Garfield follows below. Thank you. Helen Atkins ************************************************** Helen Barsky Atkins Director, Database Development ISI 3501 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 215.386.0100 x1218 215.387.4706 (Fax) helen.atkins at isinet.com ************************************************** > Dr. Eugene Garfield Celebrates 75 Years > > Philadelphia, PA, USA September 15, 2000 - Today, Dr. Eugene Garfield, > founder and Chairman Emeritus, ISI, celebrated his 75th birthday at the > company's headquarters in Philadelphia. Over 500 ISI employees and the > staff from The Scientist*, a news journal for life scientists, where Dr. > Garfield serves as President and Editor-in-Chief, joined him. > > At the celebration, Vin Caraher, Senior Vice President, Sales & Market > Development, ISI, acknowledged the many contributions Dr. Garfield has > made in scientific communications and information science. In particular, > Caraher talked about his significant contribution to information recovery > in the publication of the first multi disciplinary citation index to the > genetics literature, which led eventually to the release of the Science > Citation Index* in 1964. "Today," Caraher noted, "this citation index, > which is available via the Web of Science*, is used by more than 3.5 > million researchers worldwide. That number alone serves as testimony to > the international impact Dr. Garfield's work has made in the scholarly > research community." > > About The Web of Knowledge > > In addition, Dr. Garfield was presented with an advance copy of the > monograph, The Web of Knowledge. > > This festschrift produced in his honor addresses the history, theory and > practical applications of citation indexing and examines its impact on > scholarly and scientific research 40 years after its inception. The > editors of the monograph, Blaise Cronin, Rudy Professor of Information > Science and Dean, School of Library and Information Science, Indiana > University; and Helen Barsky Atkins, Director, Database Development, ISI, > made the presentation. The book will be released in November at the > American Society for Information Science and Technology, (ASIS&T) Annual > Meeting in Chicago. For more information about the festschrift, see: > http://www.infotoday.com/catalog/asis.htm. > > About Dr. Garfield > > Dr. Garfield is currently President of ASIS&T and a member of the Board of > Overseers, University of Pennsylvania Library. He is a member of many > scientific and professional associations, including the American Chemical > Society, the Drug Information Association and the European Association of > Science Editors. Garfield has been the recipient of many national and > international awards. In 1986, the City of Philadelphia awarded him the > John Scott Award, and in 1991, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia > awarded him an honorary Ph.D. In 1993 and 1995 respectively, he was > awarded an honorary M.D. from the University of Rome, Tor Vergata, Italy > and Charles University, Czech Republic. A list of his publications can be > found at his Web site: http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/. > > About ISI > > ISI is an international information publisher providing reference products > in the fields of the life sciences, chemistry, technology, > pharmaceuticals, healthcare, engineering and business. The company is > part of The Thomson Corporation, a leading global e-information and > solutions business with annual revenues of approximately US$6 billion. > The Corporation's common shares are listed on the Toronto (TSE:TOC) and > London stock exchanges. > > For more information about ISI, see: www.isinet.com. > > ### > The Web of Knowledge: A Festschrift in Honor of Eugene Garfield Edited by Blaise Cronin and Helen Barsky Atkins Table of Contents Introduction: The Scholar's Spoor 1-7 Blaise Cronin and Helen Barsky Atkins Historical Perspectives Chapter 1: Eugene Garfield: History, Scientific Information and Chemical Endeavor 11-23 Arnold Thackray and David C. Brock Chapter 2: How the Science Citation Index Got Started 25-64 Joshua Lederberg Chapter 3: Garfield as Alchemist 65-71 Paul Wouters Chapter 4: Assessing the Value of a Database Company 73-84 Robert M. Hayes The Scientific Literature Chapter 5: The Growth of Journal Literature: A Historical Perspective 87-107 Jack Meadows Chapter 6: The Role of Journals in the Growth of Scientific Knowledge 109-142 Stephen Cole Chapter 7: Scholarly Communication and Bibliometrics Revisited . 143-162 Christine L. Borgman Chapter 8: Publication Velocity, Publication Growth and Impact Factor: An Empirical Model 163-176 P?ter Vinkler Chapter 9: Visualizing Citation Connections 177-194 Tony Cawkell International Issues Chapter 10: Collaboration Networks in Science 197-213 Mar?a Bordons and Isabel G?mez Chapter 11: International Collaboration in Science: The Case of India and China 215-231 Subbiah Arunachalam Chapter 12: Publication Indicators in Latin America Revisited 233-250 Jane M. Russell Chapter 13: How Balanced is the Science Citation Index's Journal Coverage? A Preliminary Overview of Macro-Level Statistical Data 251-277 Tibor Braun, Wolfgang Gl?nzel and Andr?s Schubert Evaluative Bibliometrics Chapter 14: A Short History of the Use of Citations as a Measure of the Impact of Scientific and Scholarly Work 281-300 Jonathan R. Cole Chapter 15: The Pandora's Box of Citation Analysis: Measuring Scientific Excellence-the Last Evil? 301-319 Anthony F. J. van Raan Chapter 16: The Complementarity of Scientometrics and Economics 321-336 Arthur M. Diamond, Jr. Chapter 17: The Development of Science Indicators in the United States 337-360 Francis Narin, Kimberly S. Hamilton and Dominic Olivastro Chapter 18: Citations as a Means to Evaluate Biomedical Research 361-372 Grant Lewison Chapter 19: Applying Diachronic Citation Analysis to Research Program Evaluations 373-387 Peter Ingwersen, Birger Larsen and Irene Wormell Chapter 20: Scientometrics, Cybermetrics, and Firm Performance 389-404 Michael E. D. Koenig and Mary Westermann-Cicio Chapter 21: Do Patent Citations Count? 405-432 Charles Oppenheim Social Network Analysis Chapter 22: On the Garfield Input to the Sociology of Science: A Retrospective Collage 435-448 Robert K. Merton Chapter 23: Charting Pathways through Science: Exploring Garfield's Vision of a Unified Index to Science 449-473 Henry Small Chapter 24: Toward Ego-Centered Citation Analysis 475-496 Howard D. White Chapter 25: Graphing Micro-Regions in the Web of Knowledge: A Comparative Reference-Network Analysis 497-516 Lowell L. Hargens Chapter 26: The Citation Network as a Prototype for Representing Trust in Virtual Environments 517-534 Elisabeth Davenport and Blaise Cronin > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bjorn.tell at LUB.LU.SE Fri Sep 29 09:47:54 2000 From: bjorn.tell at LUB.LU.SE (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Bj=F6rn?= Tell) Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 15:47:54 +0200 Subject: ABS: Wormell, Bibliomeetric Analysis of the Welfare State as a Research Phenomenon, Parts 1 and 2 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >From: Wormell Irene > >I. Wormell, "Bibliometric Analysis of the Welfare State as a Research >Phenomenon". Scientometrics, 47(2000)2, pp.203-236 . > >The article is reporting the results of the first part of an extensive >informetric analysis of the Welfare topic, carried out in 1998-99. The aim >was to analyse the structure of the literature of international Welfare >research, to provide a detailed picture of its basic theoretical and >empirical concepts and the mutual relations existing between these concepts. > >The approach is novel in that through the application of quantitative (i.e. >bibliometric) techniques it tries to reduce subjectivity in domain analysis >and in the mapping of the developments and segmentation in special topical >areas. >The analysis used the technique of co-ordinated online searches in a cluster >of international bibliographic databases in DIALOG. The relevant theoretical >and empirical concepts have been structured in 13 sub-topics which have >been in detail analysed, in three time intervals. > >Welfare State >Social indicators >Retrenchment >Patriarchal State >Altruism (solidarity) >Marginalization >Social insurance, safety net >Unemployment benefit >Keynesian economics >Public economy >Communitarism, pluralism, corporatism >Public service delivery (health, education, children, elderly people) >Public choice (privatization, licitation, evaluation, innovation in public >services) > >By measuring trends and developments in the number of publications, term >occurrences, similarity between the subject terms and formation of clusters >among the subject segments, the analysis provides a comprehensive review of >such a complex research field as the Welfare State is. The study, which >primary aim is to improve the methodology of quantitative analysis in the >so called "soft" sciences, will increase the interest among social >scientists, scholars of the humanities and library and information science >to use databases as analytical tools and to apply the modern text mining >techniques for the extraction of knowledge from bibliographic data. > > > >I. Wormell, "Critical Aspects of the Danish Welfare State -As Revealed by >Issue Tracking". Scientometrics, 47(20002, pp.237-250. > >This article constitutes the second part of the project entitled >"Informetric Analysis of the Welfare Topic". >The study applied and developed the methodology of issue tracking for >"informetric studies" in the area of social sciences where metric techniques >have been little used so far. Issue tracking and monitoring of literature >are known methodologies in the area of science and technology, but due to >the differences in the scientific communication, quantitative analysis in >the "soft" sciences requires other techniques and research attitudes. It >was aimed to explore these differences and improve the existing >methodologies by applying them to another type of scientific communication - >where the topics and their subject representations are often ambiguous, >therefore, the accurate identification, selection and harmonisation of >search terms are cornerstones of the analysis. > >The project aims to introduce and test the possibilities and limits of >quantitative methods to unearth important past, current and future >conditions related to the development of the Welfare concept in Denmark. >This article is focusing on the methodology and does not attempt to provide >explanations and interpretations of the topics analysed. In the project >there have been involved information scientists and a panel of domain >experts and other specialists. However, the dialogues and consultations with >the expert panel ensure the inclusion of certain qualitative elements into >the study. > >Using the issue tracking methodology the 13 selected topics (see above) were >analysed in periods accross various types of the Danish national databases >covering information about the research, implementation, press and >legislation aspects. >This is a useful methodology for following how a concept (originating from >an innovation or a new idea) is moving through the path of various >publication forms e.g., > >Theoretical research applied research techniques and engineering > popular press and mass media legislation > >To provide a realistic and structured form for the study, the expert panel >suggested to use the following three main points on the present criticism of >the "Welfare State": > > Economic aspects, Can we afford it? > Legitimacy, Does the people believe in it and how >much do they support it? > Functionality, How does it work? > >Thus, the paper trace the pattern of debate about the three main critical >issues of the modern Welfare State in Denmark: economic aspects, legitimacy >and functionality. The approach taken is novel in that it implements and >tests issue tracking in this area of social sciences, and tries to reduce >subjectivity in the analysis of trends influencing social policy and public >opinion. The study aims to show how the emerging data and text mining >techniques can be applied to integrate downloaded bibliographic data with >other types of information in a strategic mix. > >In co-operation with the Institute for Future Studies, Denmark/Sweden, we >are planning to continue the analyses of the information flow between >research , media and the political system in order to show the gaps between >the politicians? and the population?s opinion about the Welfare State in >Denmark. This will be an extensive project where the informetric analyses, >along with several other methods, will be used for mapping the differences >in the opinion of the Danish people and the state. > >The final report is published in three volumes: > >Irene Wormell, Informetric Analysis of the Welfare State as a Research >Phenomenon.Centre for Informetric Studies, Copenhagen, 1999. >(CIS Report 8).Vol. I. General description and the results of the project. >77 p. >Vol. II. Methodology. 28 p. >Vol III. Resum?. 28 p. > >Contact: >Centre for Informetric Studies, >Royal School of Library and Information Science, Birketinget 6, DK-2300 >Copenhagen, Denmark. > >Tel: +45 32 58 60 66; Fax:: +45 32 84 02 01 >http://www.db.dk/cis >----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Gretchen, As I am not at home, I have not access to Gene's e-mail address, so, please, convey my best greetings to him from his very old friend, Bjorn Tell, and tell him to still be active as I try to be, going to the University of Le?n in Nicaragua next month to teach about Internet resources, such as ISI. Best wishes Bjorn Tell