Web citation (fwd)

[Gretchen Whitney]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 12:25:22 +0100
From: Prof. Tom Wilson <t.d.wilson at SHEF.AC.UK>
To: JESSE at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: Web citation

There have been a few mentions of Web citation searching possibly replacing
citation indexing in time and I wondered how many people are now, as a
matter of course, using counts of Web mentions in their cases for
appointment, tenure or promotion.

I looked at a couple of my own papers and counted the SSCI citations and
then searched for mentions of the papers on the Web - the results left me
wondering whether the reliance on citation indexing as a measure of
performance is now past its sell by date.

My most cited paper is "On user studies and information needs" (1981) - a
Web search (using Google) revealed 118 pages that listed the title. The
pages were reading lists, free electronic journals, and documents that would
never be covered by SSCI, such as reports from various agencies. SSCI
revealed, if I recall aright, 79 citations of the paper. The question is: is
the Web revealing impact more effectively than SSCI?  Citation in scholarly
papers takes a variety of forms and much citation is of a token variety - x
is cited because x is always cited. On the other hand citation on reading
lists implies some positive recommendation of the text, and mention in
policy documents and the like, implies (at least in some cases) that some
benefit has been found in the cited document.

It may also be that the use of Web citation would provide a more complete
measure - I discovered, much to my surprise, that a 1971 text of mine on
'chain indexing' is cited on one reading list and in the bibliography of a
document in German on classification. Greater international coverage is a
further benefit of using Web citation.

It strikes me that a move towards using Web citation as the measure of
performance would be rather more useful than the use of citation indexes.

No doubt others have looked at this issue - is any consensus emerging?

Tom Wilson

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Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD
Publisher/Editor in Chief
Information Research
University of Sheffield
Sheffield S10 2TN
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-114-222-2642
E-mail: t.d.wilson at shef.ac.uk
Web site: http://InformationR.net/
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