From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Mon Nov 4 17:03:08 2002 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 17:03:08 -0500 Subject: Jimenez-Contreras E, Lopez-Cozar ED, Ruiz-Perez R, Fernandez " Impact factor rewards affect Spanish research" Nature 417(6892):898- June 27 2002 Message-ID: E. Jimenez-Contreras, E-mail: ejimenez at ugr.es E. Delgado Lopez-Cozar, E-mail: edelgado at ugr.es R. Ruiz Perez. E-mail: rruiz at ugr.es Full text of letter - if you have access to Nature : http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v417/n6892/f ull/417898b_fs.html TITLE Impact-factor rewards affect Spanish research AUTHORS Jimenez-Contreras E, Lopez-Cozar ED, Ruiz-Perez R, Fernandez JOURNAL NATURE 417 (6892): 898-898 JUN 27 2002 Document type: Letter Language: English Cited References: 4 Times Cited: 0 Cited Author Cited Work Volume Page Year ADAM D NATURE 415 726 2002 FERNANDEZ MT ARBOR 639 327 1999 GOMEZ I SCIENCE 276 883 1997 JIMENEZCONTRERA.E IN PRESS RES POLICY 2002 Addresses: Jimenez-Contreras E, Univ Granada, Sch Lib & Informat Sci, Dept Lib & Informat Sci, E-18071 Granada, Spain Univ Granada, Sch Lib & Informat Sci, Dept Lib & Informat Sci, E-18071 Granada, Spain CSIC, Inst Catalysis, Natl Commiss Evaluat Res Act CNEAI, E-28049 Madrid, Spain Publisher: NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP, LONDON IDS Number: 566RC ISSN: 0028-0836 From Andrea.Scharnhorst at NIWI.KNAW.NL Tue Nov 5 10:39:53 2002 From: Andrea.Scharnhorst at NIWI.KNAW.NL (Andrea Scharnhorst) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 16:39:53 +0100 Subject: Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Information Science Message-ID: ################################################### Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Information Science ################################################### - to Study the Impact of European Science, Technology and Innovation Research on the Web A position has become available for a postdoctoral researcher to work on a 3-year long EU funded project into developing and implementing Web link based metrics to analyse the impact of science, technology and innovation research on the Web. The Wolverhampton research group (http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/) has played a significant part in laying the foundations for this exciting new area of research and the successful applicant will have the opportunity to use the tools developed by the group and to build on the methodologies in order to make an important contribution to the development of this new field. In the nature of the post it is not expected that applicants will have prior experience of similar work but those with a Ph.D. in an area related to Information Science, Computer Science or Maths will be considered. The successful applicant will have working knowledge of the Web, the Internet and basic statistics, and will be able to apply their existing research skills to this new area. The project involves international collaboration and the researcher should expect to have to occasionally visit other countries in Europe for team meetings and conferences, in addition to attending a conference in China. Good communication and team working skills are essential, and knowledge of one or more other European languages would be an advantage. Applicants from European countries outside the UK are particularly encouraged to apply. The salary will be on the researcher B scale from ?17624 - ?22948 per year and the starting date will be as soon as possible after the interview. Please contact Mike Thelwall m.thelwall at wlv.ac.uk with any queries. For detailed further particulars and an application form (returnable by 22 November 2002) and quoting the reference number Ref A3164, contact the Personnel Services Department, University of Wolverhampton, Molineux Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1SB, UK. Tel: 01902 321049 (ansaphone). For hearing impaired candidates our minicom number is 01902 321249. Email address: per at wlv.ac.uk The University is eager to attract larger numbers of applications from groups of people currently under- represented in the staff population, especially from women and people from ethnic minority groups. Related jobs are also available in Amsterdam, see also http://www.webindicators.org Dr. Andrea Scharnhorst NERDI Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services (NIWI) KNAW Joan Muyskenweg 25 Postbus 95110 1090 HC Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel: +20 4628 670 www.niwi.knaw.nl/nerdi -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bernies at UILLINOIS.EDU Thu Nov 7 15:21:43 2002 From: bernies at UILLINOIS.EDU (Sloan, Bernie) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 14:21:43 -0600 Subject: Definition of word frequency analysis? Message-ID: Would any of you happen to have a good concise definition of word frequency analysis? Thanks in advance! Bernie Sloan Senior Library Information Systems Consultant, ILCSO University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting 616 E. Green Street, Suite 213 Champaign, IL 61820 Phone: (217) 333-4895 Fax: (217) 265-0454 E-mail: bernies at uillinois.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From David.Watkins at SOLENT.AC.UK Fri Nov 8 04:13:15 2002 From: David.Watkins at SOLENT.AC.UK (David Watkins) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 09:13:15 +0000 Subject: Word frequency Message-ID: While the topic is in play, what are collegues' recommendations on software tools to support this? ************************************************ Professor David Watkins Postgraduate Research Centre Southampton Business School East Park Terrace Southampton SO14 0RH 023 80 319610 (Tel) +44 23 80 319610 (Tel) 023 80 332627 (Fax) +44 23 80 332627 (Fax) david.watkins at solent.ac.uk Automatic digest processor @LISTSERV.UTK.EDU> on 08/11/2002 05:02:50 Please respond to ASIS Special Interest Group on Metrics Sent by: ASIS Special Interest Group on Metrics To: Recipients of SIGMETRICS digests cc: (bcc: David Watkins/SBS/Southampton Institute) Subject: SIGMETRICS Digest - 5 Nov 2002 to 7 Nov 2002 (#2002-101) There is one message totalling 68 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Definition of word frequency analysis? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 14:21:43 -0600 From: "Sloan, Bernie" Subject: Definition of word frequency analysis? This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. ------_=_NextPart_001_01C2869B.49815220 Content-Type: text/plain Would any of you happen to have a good concise definition of word frequency analysis? Thanks in advance! Bernie Sloan Senior Library Information Systems Consultant, ILCSO University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting 616 E. Green Street, Suite 213 Champaign, IL 61820 Phone: (217) 333-4895 Fax: (217) 265-0454 E-mail: bernies at uillinois.edu ------_=_NextPart_001_01C2869B.49815220 Content-Type: text/html Definition of word frequency analysis?

Would any of you happen to have a good concise definition of word frequency analysis?

Thanks in advance!

Bernie Sloan

Senior Library Information Systems Consultant, ILCSO

University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting

616 E. Green Street, Suite 213

Champaign, IL  61820

Phone: (217) 333-4895

Fax:   (217) 265-0454

E-mail: bernies at uillinois.edu

------_=_NextPart_001_01C2869B.49815220-- ------------------------------ End of SIGMETRICS Digest - 5 Nov 2002 to 7 Nov 2002 (#2002-101) *************************************************************** From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Mon Nov 11 15:01:51 2002 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 15:01:51 -0500 Subject: Motamed M, Mehta D, Basavaraj S, Fuad F "Self citations and impact factors in otolaryngology journals" CLINICAL OTOLARYNGOLOGY 27 (5): 318-320 OCT 2002 Message-ID: M. Motamed : e-mail : motamed2 at hotmail.com TITLE - Self citations and impact factors in otolaryngology journals AUTHOR - Motamed M, Mehta D, Basavaraj S, Fuad F JOURNAL - CLINICAL OTOLARYNGOLOGY 27 (5): 318-320 OCT 2002 Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 3 Times Cited: 0 Abstract: Self citation of a journal may affect its impact factor. Self citations during 1997 and 1998 were investigated in six 'general' otolaryngology journals. The citations each journal gave to other journals, including itself, and the citations each journal received from the other journals, differed significantly among the six journals (chi(2) = 2794, d.f. = 25, P < 0.0001). Acta Otolaryngologica and Laryngoscope had the highest self-citing rates (11.9% and 10.02%). Clinical Otolaryngology had the lowest self-citing rate (4%). There was no significant correlation between self-citing rates and impact factors for the six otolaryngology journals (r = -0.3143, P = 0.56). Author Keywords: otolaryngology, publications, impact factor Addresses: Motamed M, QMC, 7 Arthur St, Ampthill MK45 2QG, Beds, England Univ Hosp, Dept ORL H&N Surg, Nottingham, England Derbyshire Royal Infirm, Dept ORL H&N Surg, Derby DE1 2QY, England Publisher: BLACKWELL PUBLISHING LTD, OXFORD IDS Number: 604GK ISSN: 0307-7772 When responding, please attach my original message _______________________________________________________________________ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266 President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org _______________________________________________________________________ From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Mon Nov 11 15:04:08 2002 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 15:04:08 -0500 Subject: Khurshid A, Hoessli DC, Choudhary MI, Ovais M, Qazi A,Atta-Ur-Rahman, Nasir-Ud-Din "Bio-informatics: A new life to computer sciences" JOURNAL OF THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF PAKISTAN 24 (1): 62-69 MAR 2002 Message-ID: Title - Bio-informatics: A new life to computer sciences Author - Khurshid A, Hoessli DC, Choudhary MI, Ovais M, Qazi A, Atta-Ur-Rahman, Nasir-Ud-Din Journal- JOURNAL OF THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF PAKISTAN 24 (1): 62-69 MAR 2002 Document type: Review Language: English Cited References: 24 Times Cited: 0 Abstract: The refinement and precision of biochemical techniques coupled with enhanced computer technology, speed and capacity, have resulted in a converged system of bioinformatics providing us with means to discover and predict biological functions on molecular basis. This rapidly emerging field is in line with explosive growth of life sciences. There is an ever increasing need to manage integrate and interrogate vast amounts of information data particularly in genomics The new sciences of genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics are providing us with a sense of continuously emerging revolution in the area of biochemical, and biomedical sciences. The progress in new technologies involving computer sciences, information technology and biological and biochemical systems including that of microarray are likely to translate the biological data into a healthy future. The search for important patterns from vast amounts of fragmentary data of genetics sequence may give biological clues to biologically inspired models and ultimately providing system for artificial neural networks, genetics algorithms or analog & digital optical pattern recognition. KeyWords Plus: FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS, SEQUENCE DATABASE, GENE-EXPRESSION, PROTEIN, OLIGONUCLEOTIDES, HYBRIDIZATION, TECHNOLOGIES, NUCLEOTIDE, CHIPS Addresses: Nasir-Ud-Din, Univ Lahore, Inst Mol Med & Biomed Sci, Lahore, Pakistan Univ Lahore, Inst Mol Med & Biomed Sci, Lahore, Pakistan Univ Geneva, Dept Pathol, CMU, CH-1211 Geneva, Switzerland Univ Karachi, HEJ Res Inst Chem, Karachi 32, Pakistan Publisher: CHEM SOC PAKISTAN, KARACHI IDS Number: 599UX ISSN: 0253-5106 Cited Author Cited Work Volume Page Year ALTSCHUL SF NUCLEIC ACIDS RES 25 3389* 1997 BADER GD BIOINFORMATICS 16 465 2000 BAIROCH A NUCLEIC ACIDS RES 28 45* 2000 BELLAVANCE LL GENET ENG NEWS 19 32 1999 BENSON DA NUCLEIC ACIDS RES 28 15* 2000 BURKE DT GENOME RES 7 189 1997 DIEHL F NUCLEIC ACIDS RES 29 E38* 2001 DURSO WT SCIENTIST 11 13 1997 EISEN MB METHOD ENZYMOL 303 179 1999 ENRIGHT AJ BIOINFORMATICS 16 451 2000 FODOR SPA NATURE 364 555 1993 HACIA JG NAT GENET 14 367 1996 HETIMANIKATIS METAB ENG 1 275 1999 HIETER P SCIENCE 278 601 1997 JAIN KK DRUG DISCOV TODAY 4 50 1999 MASKOS U NUCLEIC ACIDS RES 20 1679* 1992 PARK J BIOINFORMATICS 16 458 2000 PEARSON WR P NATL ACAD SCI USA 85 2444 1988 PESOLE G BIOINFORMATICS 16 439 2000 SCHENA M SCIENCE 270 467 1995 SIEW N IBM SYST J 40 410 2001 SINCLAIR B SCIENTIST 13 18 1999 SOUTHERN EM TRENDS GENET 12 110 1996 STOESSER G NUCLEIC ACIDS RES 29 17* 2001 When responding, please attach my original message _______________________________________________________________________ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266 President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org _______________________________________________________________________ From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Nov 19 15:21:20 2002 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 15:21:20 -0500 Subject: "Garfield's conjecture: Do international journals have a higher impact factor than German-language journals?" Message-ID: This article appeared in German. Unfortunately I cannot find the original german article, nor do I have the full citation for it. If anyone can identify the author or the original publication, please let me know. The translated version follows: Garfield's conjecture: Do international journals have a higher impact factor than German-language journals? Eugene Garfield postulates: German-language science journals have definitely their regional significance, but cannot compete well with internationally oriented periodicals regarding the impact factor. He suggests that German journals do not meet international standards, and do not report the results of top research.., since even German scientists prefer to offer their best work to international journals: ''I am often surprised at the level of misunderstanding of German editors about citation analysis and the impact factor. There is a great need for national journals written in German and other European languages, but it is absurd to expect them to reach the same level of impact as international journals, unless they adhere to the same standards as leading journals and attract significant original research. German scientists understand that fact of life and for this reason they mainly publish their best work in English in international journals'' (Garfield 2002, 25). Does this conjecture also hold true for German-language information science? A cursory look at Table 5-3 shows that German-language journals are liberally.... distributed in the classification of international periodicals. In no way do they rank last according the impact factor. Lediglich, purely, simply, ZfBB and NfD, however, are represented in the ISI databases. As for ?Bibliothek. Forschung und Praxis?, ?ABI Technik?, ?Bibliotheksdienst, Buch und Bibliothek? and ?ProLibris?, their exclusion cannot then be explained. Hence, the omission of this titles must coincide with some unmet ''basic standards'' (cf. Chapter 1). However, some of our periodicals do meet those standards. The journal publication dates are regular; the articles have well-formulated searchable titles; footnotes are available (otherwise, we would have not been able to count them); English summaries are provided. If the texts are always peer-reviewed, that we cannot verify. (''JfD'' has no peer review process, but stills shows up in ISI's products.) It appears as though ISI is covering two German alibi journals with ''ZfBB'' and ''NfD'' without involving itself any further in the area of German periodicals. It is also possible that ISI does not know these periodicals at all, because they are hardly cited in ISI source journals. This could just be evidence then of poor marketing on the part of publishers and publishing companies. In short, ISI is thoroughly open to expert opinions -- and that means in plain talk ''knocking on doors''! So certainly for some of the top German journals in information science, Garfield's conjecture does not apply. However, Eugene Garfield may not have interpreted his conjecture in this fashion. Still this matters involves, to a greater extent, German-language and international journals in general. After this preliminary glance, we must look more closely and compare both distributions (German-language periodicals based on the rIF and JCR periodicals based on the IF) using statistical methods. We consider the 38 volumes of the German periodicals and the 144 volumes of the international periodicals as sampled sets. (The samples are not random, as we have explained in the methodology section. Therefore, the results should be read with some reservations.) We determine the confidence interval which contains the true value of the population parameter. If the intervals do not intersect, then the distributions are different and Garfield's conjecture would be confirmed. If the intervals do in fact intersect, then the distributions are not different and Garfield's conjecture would be quite dubious. We accept a 1%-error probability so that our result will have a 99%-significance level. For the German information science journals, we find: - arithmetic mean: rIF = 0.25 - standard deviation of the sample: 0.19 - N = 38 - Confidence level (1%): 0.08 -The value of the mean for German periodicals lies between 0.17 and 0.33 for a 1%-percent error rate. The result is clear. Both intervals have different ranges so that we may assume different parameters. The average German information-science journal (statistically speaking) has a regional impact factor lying presumably in the range 0.17-0.33. The average international (JCR) periodical has an impact factor lying in the range 0.38-0.56. Therefore, the impact factor for JCR journals is double that of the German-language periodicals. Garfield's conjecture is confirmed. German information science journals have a significantly lower impact factor than the international periodicals evaluated by ISI. When responding, please attach my original message __________________________________________________ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266 President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com 3535 Market St., Phila. PA 19104-3389 Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com 3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3302 Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Nov 19 15:29:45 2002 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 15:29:45 -0500 Subject: Thelwall M. "An initial exploration of the link relationship between UK university Web Sites" ASLIB Proceedings 54(2):118-126, 2002 Message-ID: M. Thelwall : e-mail: m.thelwall at wlv.ac.uk Article Available At: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/001-253x.htm Title An initial exploration of the link relationship between UK university Web sites Author Thelwall M Journal ASLIB PROCEEDINGS 54 (2): 118-126 2002 Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 21 Times Cited: 0 Abstract: Aggregates of links are of interest to information scientists in the same way as citation counts are: as potential sources of data from which new knowledge can be mined. Builds on the recent discovery of a correlation between a Web link count measure and the research quality of British universities by applying a range of multivariate statistical techniques to counts of links between pairs of universities. 'This represents an initial attempt at developing an understanding of this phenomenon. Extracts plausible results. Also identifies outliers in the data by the techniques, some of which were verified by being tracked down to identifiable Web phenomena. This is an important outcome because successful anomaly identification is a precondition to more effective analysis of this kind of data. The identification of groupings is encouraging evidence that Web links between universities can be mined for significant results, although it is clear that more methodological development is needed, if any but the simplest patterns are to be extracted. Finally, based upon the types of patterns extracted, argues that none of the methods used are capable of fully analysing link structures on their own. Author Keywords: universities, Internet, user studies, networks KeyWords Plus: IMPACT FACTORS, SPACES Addresses: Thelwall M, Wolverhampton Univ, Sch Comp & Informat Technol, Wolverhampton, England Wolverhampton Univ, Sch Comp & Informat Technol, Wolverhampton, England Publisher: EMERALD, BRADFORD IDS Number: 579VN ISSN: 0001-253X Cited Author Cited Work Volume Page Year BARILAN J CYBERMETRICS 2 1999 BARILAN J SCIENTOMETRICS 50 7 2001 BJORNEBORN L SCIENTOMETRICS 50 65 2001 CHEN CM INFORM PROCESS MANAG 35 401 1999 CHEN CM INTERACT COMPUT 10 353 1998 CRONIN B J AM SOC INF SCI TEC 52 558 2001 DAVENPORT E ASIS MONOGRAPH SERIE 517 2000 EGGHE L J INFORM SCI 26 329 2000 HARTER SP J AM SOC INFORM SCI 51 1159 2000 INGWERSEN P J DOC 54 236 1998 LARSON RR ASIS 96 1996 ROUSSEAU R CYBERMETRICS 2 1999 SMITH AG J DOC 55 577 1999 SNYDER H J DOC 55 375 1999 THELWALL M CYBERMETRICS 5 2001 THELWALL M J AM SOC INF SCI TEC 52 1157 2001 THELWALL M J DOC 58 60 2002 THELWALL M J DOC 57 177 2001 THELWALL M J DOC 56 185 2000 THELWALL M J INFORM SCI 27 393 2001 WHITE HD J AM SOC INFORM SCI 32 163 1981 When responding, please attach my original message _______________________________________________________________________ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266 President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org _______________________________________________________________________ From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Nov 19 16:00:37 2002 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 16:00:37 -0500 Subject: Articles from Anales Espanoles de Pediatria 57(2), August 2002 Message-ID: The following papers appeared in Anales Espanoles de Pediatria 57(2). August 2002. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. A. Bonillo Perales : abonillop at telefonica.net TITLE: Evaluation of the quality of Anales Espanoles de Pediatria versus Medicina Clinica (Article, Spanish) AUTHOR: Perales, AB SOURCE: ANALES ESPANOLES DE PEDIATRIA 57 (2). AUG 2002. p.138-140 EDICIONES DOYMA S/L, BARCELONA Full text article available at : http://db.doyma.es/cgi-bin/wdbcgi.exe/doyma/mrevista.fulltext?pident=1303515 6 SEARCH TERM(S): BIBLIOMETR* keyword KEYWORDS: bibliometrics; scientific methodology; scientific quality; scientific evidence; critical evaluation; pediatrics; children; An Esp Pediatr; Med Clin; statistics KEYWORDS+: DE-PEDIATRIA; JOURNALS ABSTRACT: objectives To compare the scientific methodology and quality of articles published in Anales Espanoles de Pediatria and Medicina Clinica. Material and methods A stratified and randomized selection of 40 original articles published in 2001 in Anales Espanoles de Pediatria and Medicina Clinica was made. Methodological errors in the critical analysis of original articles (21 items), epidemiological design, sample size, statistical complexity and levels of scientific evidence in both journals were compared using the chi-squared and/or Student's t-test. Results No differences were found between Anales Espanoles de Pediatria and Medicina Clinica in the critical evaluation of original articles (p > 0.2). In original articles published in Anales Espanoles de Pediatria, the designs were of lower scientific evidence (a lower proportion of clinical trials, cohort and case-control studies) (17.5 vs 42.5%, p = 0.05), sample sizes were smaller (p = 0.003) and there was less statistical complexity in the results section (p = 0.03). Conclusions To improve the scientific quality of Anales Espanoles de Pediatria, improved study designs, larger sample sizes and greater statistical. complexity are required in its articles. AUTHOR ADDRESS: AB Perales, Linares 2,2 2A, Almeria 04007, Spain -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. F. Garcia Rio : e-mail: fgr01m at jazzfree.com TITLE: Analysis of the impact of Anales Espanoles de Pediatria through the science citation index from 1997-2000 (Article, Spanish) AUTHOR: Rio, FG; Alises, SM; Paz, PE; Perez-Yarza, EG SOURCE: ANALES ESPANOLES DE PEDIATRIA 57 (2). AUG 2002. p.131-137 EDICIONES DOYMA S/L, BARCELONA Full text available at : http://db.doyma.es/cgi-bin/wdbcgi.exe/doyma/mrevista.fulltext?pident=1303515 4 SEARCH TERM(S): GARFIELD E rauth; SCIENTOMETRICS rwork; BIBLIOMETR* keyword; CITATION* item_title; IMPACT FACTOR* keyword KEYWORDS: documentation; bibliometry; impact factor; pediatrics; statistics KEYWORDS+: SPANISH SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION; BIBLIOMETRIC INDICATORS; RESPIRATORY SYSTEM; JOURNALS; CONSUMPTION; INFORMATION ABSTRACT: Objectives To quantify the impact factor of Anales Espanoles de Pediatria from 1997 until 2000 and to identify the journal's citation patterns and the topics with the greatest impact. Methods SCISEARCH was used to locate citations of articles published in Anales Espanoles de Pediatria between 1995 and 1999. The following data were collected for each article: year of publication, authors, journal, country of publication, language, specialty or specialties, institution(s), residence of the first author and topic. The impact factor was calculated as the ratio between citations received over 1 year by articles published in Anales Espanoles de Pediatria in the two previous years and the total number of articles published by Anales Espanoles de Pediatria over the 2 years under study. Results The Impact factor of Anales Espanoles de Pediatria was 0.052 in 1997, 0.080 in 1998, 0.101 in 1999, 0.089 in 2000 and 0.064 in 2001. Citations were found in a wide range of source journals. The greatest proportion (35.6%) were found in Spanish medical journals. Citations were made mainly by Spanish authors (62.8%) and self-citation was moderate (14.3%). Topics related to neurology (16.9% of the citations received), infectious diseases (16.2%) and neonatology (14.8%) had the greatest impact. Conclusion The impact factor of Anales Espanoles de Pediatria is modest, although higher than that of some other biomedical publications included in journal Citation Reports. AUTHOR ADDRESS: FG Rio, Alfredo Marquerie,11 Izqda,1 A, Madrid 28034, Spain -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. J. Gonzalez de Dios : e-mail: gonzalez_jav at gva.es TITLE: Anales Espanoles de Pediatria 2001. Bibliometric indicators of scientific quality (Article, Spanish) AUTHOR: de Dios, JG SOURCE: ANALES ESPANOLES DE PEDIATRIA 57 (2). AUG 2002. p.141-151 EDICIONES DOYMA S/L, BARCELONA Full text available at : http://db.doyma.es/cgi-bin/wdbcgi.exe/doyma/mrevista.fulltext?pident=1303515 8 SEARCH TERM(S): SCIENTOMETRICS rwork; BIBLIOMETR* keyword; BIBLIOMETR* item_title KEYWORDS: bibliometry; statistics; evidence-based medicine; methodology KEYWORDS+: MEDICAL LITERATURE; DE-PEDIATRIA; USERS GUIDES; HELP ME; JOURNALS; ARTICLE; WILL ABSTRACT: Background One important objective of Anales Espanoles de Pediatria (An Esp Pediatr) is to be included in journal Citation Reports- Science Citation index and the main step to achieve this is to increase the scientific quality of this Spanish journal. Bibliometric indicators are important tools used to determine the quality of scientific publications. Material and methods A bibliometric study of all the original articles published in An Esp Pediatr in 2001 (n = 76) was performed; bibliometric indicators were classified into quantitative and qualitative (statistical analyses and level of scientific evidence). The results were compared with the original articles published in the journal from 1994 to June 2000 (n = 733) and with the original articles published in Pediatrics in 2001 (n = 276). Results The differences found in An Esp Pediatr between the two study periods were the following in 2001: greater collaboration between epidemiologists and/or biostatisticians in the authorship of articles (19.7%), increased complexity of statistical analyses (statistical accessibility > 7 in 25%) and greater use of evidence-based methodological concepts (19.7%). However, no improvement was found in the scientific evidence (evidence was good in only 1.4% and average in 25.7%). Other aspects of interest were a lower number of original articles (due to an increase in other types of articles, such as Letters to the Editor or Special Articles) and a greater percentage of articles on evidence-based medicine or articles, using its methodology. The differences in bibliometric indicators of quality found between An Esp Pediatr and Pediatrics continued to be considerable: statistical accessibility, evidence-based methodological concepts and scientific evidence (for example, good evidence was 22 times more frequent in Pediatrics). Conclusions The scientific quality of An E p Pediatr improved in 2001 compared with that of previous years, but the differences found between this journal and the gold standard of Pediatrics are still considerable. We found greater interest in articles related to the new scientific paradigm of evidence-based medicine, which uses the medical literature more effectively to guide medical practice. AUTHOR ADDRESS: JG de Dios, Prof Manuel Sala,6,3 A, Alicante 03003, Spain -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. A. Bonillo Perales : abonillop at telefonica.net TITLE: Spanish pediatric publications in Pubmed between 1996 and 2001 (Article, Spanish) AUTHOR: Perales, AB SOURCE: ANALES ESPANOLES DE PEDIATRIA 57 (2). AUG 2002. p.152-156 EDICIONES DOYMA S/L, BARCELONA Full text article available at : http://db.doyma.es/cgi-bin/wdbcgi.exe/doyma/mrevista.fulltext?pident=1303514 5 SEARCH TERM(S): BIBLIOMETR* keyword KEYWORDS: bibliometrics; scientific quality; scientific evidence; critical evaluation; pediatrics; children; PubMed; publications; pediatrics Spanish KEYWORDS+: ESPANOLES-DE-PEDIATRIA; MEDICAL JOURNALS; QUALITY ABSTRACT: Objectives To assess and compare the scientific pediatric production of Spanish authors in Pubmed and journal Citation Reports (JCR) between 1996 and 2001. Material and methods We reviewed the first 200 articles that appeared in PubMed between 1996 and 2001 on childhood ("newborn OR neonate OR children OR child OR infant") by Spanish authors (Spain [affiliation]). We compared the quality of study design, sample sizes, subject of the article, impact factor and the authors' specialty, using the chi-squared and/or Student's t-test. The factors related to publication in journals with an impact factor of more than 2 were analyzed using logistic regression analysis. Results Only 35% of the articles selected were performed exclusively in children. Between 1996 and 2001, Spanish pediatric publications included in the journal Impact Factor increased by 37.5%. The impact factor between these two years was similar (1.776 vs 1.823; p: NS). An impact factor of more than 2 was related to articles published in non-pediatric journals (OR: 3, 95% CI: 1.17-7-69, p = 0.018), publications including multiple regression analysis in the statistical analysis (OR: 3.27; 95 % CI: 1.12-9-56; p = 0.028), multicenter studies (OR: 4.2, 95 % CI: 1.1- 22.4, p = 0.048) and articles on immunology or molecular biology (OR: 2.45; 95 % CI: 1.01-5.92; p = 0.044). Conclusions In the last 5 years Spanish pediatric publications in journals included in the JCR increased by 37.5%. We should promote publications with larger sample sizes, multicentric studies and those with high quality design (clinical trials and cohort studies). AUTHOR ADDRESS: AB Perales, Linares 2,2,2A, Almeria 04007, Spain When responding, please attach my original message _______________________________________________________________________ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266 President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org _______________________________________________________________________ From quentinburrell at MANX.NET Tue Nov 19 17:15:08 2002 From: quentinburrell at MANX.NET (Quentin L. Burrell) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 22:15:08 -0000 Subject: "Garfield's conjecture: Do international journals have a higher impact factor than German-language journals?" In-Reply-To: <200211192104.gAJJKK9h029266@cheetah.mail.utk.edu> Message-ID: Gene I think that this is a very important - and brave! - posting since it acknowledges the fact that "standard" searches do not always reveal "significant" contributions. I would like to add that the contributions revealed by standard searches are not necessarily significant. Informetric/scientometric analyses require the data to be closely examined. Quentin -----Original Message----- From: ASIS Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU]On Behalf Of Eugene Garfield Sent: 19 November 2002 20:21 To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: [SIGMETRICS] "Garfield's conjecture: Do international journals have a higher impact factor than German-language journals?" This article appeared in German. Unfortunately I cannot find the original german article, nor do I have the full citation for it. If anyone can identify the author or the original publication, please let me know. The translated version follows: Garfield's conjecture: Do international journals have a higher impact factor than German-language journals? Eugene Garfield postulates: German-language science journals have definitely their regional significance, but cannot compete well with internationally oriented periodicals regarding the impact factor. He suggests that German journals do not meet international standards, and do not report the results of top research.., since even German scientists prefer to offer their best work to international journals: ''I am often surprised at the level of misunderstanding of German editors about citation analysis and the impact factor. There is a great need for national journals written in German and other European languages, but it is absurd to expect them to reach the same level of impact as international journals, unless they adhere to the same standards as leading journals and attract significant original research. German scientists understand that fact of life and for this reason they mainly publish their best work in English in international journals'' (Garfield 2002, 25). Does this conjecture also hold true for German-language information science? A cursory look at Table 5-3 shows that German-language journals are liberally.... distributed in the classification of international periodicals. In no way do they rank last according the impact factor. Lediglich, purely, simply, ZfBB and NfD, however, are represented in the ISI databases. As for ?Bibliothek. Forschung und Praxis?, ?ABI Technik?, ?Bibliotheksdienst, Buch und Bibliothek? and ?ProLibris?, their exclusion cannot then be explained. Hence, the omission of this titles must coincide with some unmet ''basic standards'' (cf. Chapter 1). However, some of our periodicals do meet those standards. The journal publication dates are regular; the articles have well-formulated searchable titles; footnotes are available (otherwise, we would have not been able to count them); English summaries are provided. If the texts are always peer-reviewed, that we cannot verify. (''JfD'' has no peer review process, but stills shows up in ISI's products.) It appears as though ISI is covering two German alibi journals with ''ZfBB'' and ''NfD'' without involving itself any further in the area of German periodicals. It is also possible that ISI does not know these periodicals at all, because they are hardly cited in ISI source journals. This could just be evidence then of poor marketing on the part of publishers and publishing companies. In short, ISI is thoroughly open to expert opinions -- and that means in plain talk ''knocking on doors''! So certainly for some of the top German journals in information science, Garfield's conjecture does not apply. However, Eugene Garfield may not have interpreted his conjecture in this fashion. Still this matters involves, to a greater extent, German-language and international journals in general. After this preliminary glance, we must look more closely and compare both distributions (German-language periodicals based on the rIF and JCR periodicals based on the IF) using statistical methods. We consider the 38 volumes of the German periodicals and the 144 volumes of the international periodicals as sampled sets. (The samples are not random, as we have explained in the methodology section. Therefore, the results should be read with some reservations.) We determine the confidence interval which contains the true value of the population parameter. If the intervals do not intersect, then the distributions are different and Garfield's conjecture would be confirmed. If the intervals do in fact intersect, then the distributions are not different and Garfield's conjecture would be quite dubious. We accept a 1%-error probability so that our result will have a 99%-significance level. For the German information science journals, we find: - arithmetic mean: rIF = 0.25 - standard deviation of the sample: 0.19 - N = 38 - Confidence level (1%): 0.08 -The value of the mean for German periodicals lies between 0.17 and 0.33 for a 1%-percent error rate. The result is clear. Both intervals have different ranges so that we may assume different parameters. The average German information-science journal (statistically speaking) has a regional impact factor lying presumably in the range 0.17-0.33. The average international (JCR) periodical has an impact factor lying in the range 0.38-0.56. Therefore, the impact factor for JCR journals is double that of the German-language periodicals. Garfield's conjecture is confirmed. German information science journals have a significantly lower impact factor than the international periodicals evaluated by ISI. When responding, please attach my original message __________________________________________________ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266 President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com 3535 Market St., Phila. PA 19104-3389 Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com 3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3302 Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org From johannes.stegmann at MEDIZIN.FU-BERLIN.DE Wed Nov 20 03:54:05 2002 From: johannes.stegmann at MEDIZIN.FU-BERLIN.DE (Johannes Stegmann) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 09:54:05 +0100 Subject: "Garfield's conjecture: Do international journals have a higher impact factor than German-language journals?" In-Reply-To: <200211192104.gAJJKK9h029266@cheetah.mail.utk.edu> Message-ID: At 15:21 19.11.2002 -0500, you wrote: >This article appeared in German. Unfortunately I cannot find the original >german article, nor do I have the full citation for it. If anyone can >identify the author or the original publication, please let me know. > >The translated version follows: > >Garfield's conjecture: Do international journals have a higher impact factor >than German-language journals? > Gene, this is chapter 5.3 of volume 33 of "K?lner Arbeitspapiere zur Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft". The title of this volume 33 is "Informationswissenschaftliche Zeitschriften in szientometrischer Analyse" ("information science journals in scientometric analysis" - my translation). The "author" is "Grazia Colonia" and means a project performed by students of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Austria, and of the Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences) Cologne, Germany. The volume 33 comprises 126 pages and can be downloaded as pdf from http://www.fbi.fh-koeln.de/fachbereich/papers/kabi/volltexte/band033.pdf Best whishes and regards, Johannes ------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Johannes Stegmann Univ. Hospital Benjamin Franklin Free University Berlin Medical Library johannes.stegmann at medizin.fu-berlin.de Hindenburgdamm 30 Tel.: +49 30 8445 2035 12203 Berlin Fax: +49 30 8445 4454 Germany Homepage: http://www.medizin.fu-berlin.de/medbib/home.html From suppe at PRINCETON.EDU Wed Nov 20 21:09:18 2002 From: suppe at PRINCETON.EDU (John Suppe) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 21:09:18 -0500 Subject: Citation Distributions in High Energy Physics Message-ID: There is a significant new paper filed earlier this month at the physics e- print archive (arxiv.org) by S. Lehmann et al. dealing with the "Citation distributions in high-energy physics" based on data from the SPIRES database. They show that theory, experiment and phenomenology have nearly identical distributions within high-energy physics. The data are qualitatively similar to the ISI data for all of science shown by S. Redner (1998), but the interpretations are perhaps more insightful. {S. Redner. How popular is your paper? an emperical study of the citation distribution. European Physics Journal B, 4:131-4, 1998.} S. Lehmann et al. indicate that a single power-law distribution does not fit the data but a double power-law distribution does, composed of one dominated by no-longer cited papers and a second distribution dominated by still actively cited papers. Additionally they indicate that the most highly cited papers receive fewer than expected citations because they reach canonical status (a point that others have made). The most quotable quote is "The picture which emerges is thus a small number of interesting and significant papers swimming in a sea of "dead" papers." arxiv:physics/0211010 Title: Citation Distributions in High Energy Physics Authors: S. Lehmann, B. Lautrup, A. D. Jackson (The Niels Bohr Institute) Comments: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables Subj-class: Physics and Society pdf available at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0211010 -- -- John Suppe, Department of Geosciences Guyot Hall Princeton University Princeton NJ 08544-1003 (609) 258-4119 office (609) 258-1515 lab (609) 258-1274 fax suppe at princeton.edu http://geoweb.princeton.edu/people/faculty/suppe/index.html From ronald.rousseau at KH.KHBO.BE Thu Nov 21 02:03:11 2002 From: ronald.rousseau at KH.KHBO.BE (Ronald Rousseau) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 08:03:11 +0100 Subject: Citation Distributions in High Energy Physics In-Reply-To: <200211210209.gAK537tA020945@panther.mail.utk.edu> Message-ID: And not a single reference to a LIS-journal or person, as if nothing (of any significance) has ever been written in 'our' field. Ronald Rousseau *********************************************************************** > There is a significant new paper filed earlier this month at the physics > e- > print archive (arxiv.org) by S. Lehmann et al. dealing with the > "Citation > distributions in high-energy physics" based on data from the SPIRES > database. > They show that theory, experiment and phenomenology have nearly > identical > distributions within high-energy physics. The data are qualitatively > similar > to the ISI data for all of science shown by S. Redner (1998), but the > interpretations are perhaps more insightful. > > {S. Redner. How popular is your paper? an emperical study of the > citation > distribution. European Physics Journal B, 4:131-4, 1998.} > > S. Lehmann et al. indicate that a single power-law distribution does not > fit > the data but a double power-law distribution does, composed of one > dominated > by no-longer cited papers and a second distribution dominated by still > actively cited papers. Additionally they indicate that the most highly > cited > papers receive fewer than expected citations because they reach > canonical > status (a point that others have made). > > The most quotable quote is "The picture which emerges is thus a small > number > of interesting and significant papers swimming in a sea of "dead" > papers." > > -- -- John Suppe, > Department of Geosciences > Guyot Hall > Princeton University > Princeton NJ 08544-1003 > (609) 258-4119 office > (609) 258-1515 lab > (609) 258-1274 fax > suppe at princeton.edu > http://geoweb.princeton.edu/people/faculty/suppe/index.html > Ronald Rousseau International Program Chair, 9th ISSI Conference - Beijing KHBO - Industrial Sciences and Technology Zeedijk 101 B-8400 Oostende Belgium Honorary Professor Henan Normal University (Xinxiang, China) E-mail: ronald.rousseau at kh.khbo.be web page: users.pandora.be/ronald.rousseau ------------------------------------------- | Please visit www.cscd.ac.cn/issi2003 | | the site of the Beijing ISSI conference | =========================================== From Andrea.Scharnhorst at NIWI.KNAW.NL Thu Nov 21 04:57:25 2002 From: Andrea.Scharnhorst at NIWI.KNAW.NL (Andrea Scharnhorst) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 10:57:25 +0100 Subject: Citation Distributions in High Energy Physics Message-ID: I found just this interpretation of "dead" papers the most problematic in the paper because of the negative image conveyed by the notion "dead". The fact that most of the papers are not cited at all is well known as is the fact that most scientists have a relatively low productivity compared with the few highly productive scientists. Can this fact be turned into a negative evaluation of the papers or scientists sitting on the one edge of a skew distribution? Every scientist build his work on a tremendous part of other papers. They might be well-known or un-know or yet not known. An empirical study in "successive citations" presented by Jan Vlachy 1986 (Jan Vlachy, Scientometrics analyses in physics - where we stand, Czech. J. Phys. B 36 [1986] 1-13, see also Jan Vlachy, Scientometrics 7[1986]505-528) showed 8 different types in time series of citations of physics papers: - initially high recognized -basic recognized -late recognized, innovative -late recognized, longevity -gradually recognized -genial -longevity -repeatedly recognized Having this in mind "dead" turns into "timely dead" or "partly dead" or "periodic dead"... The role of the bulk of less known or un-known scientists was also discussed in the debate around the Ortega hypothesis. 1993 Eugene Garfield wrote reviewing this debate "I was driven to find a way to acknowledge these scientists as well as other "mediocre" researchers, as J. Ortega y Gasset called them. They are not necessarily of Nobel class, but their work provides the foundation for other scientists' groundbreaking discoveries. Ortega y Gasset suggested this hypothesis in his 1932 book The revolt of Masses, stating that science is built on the contributions of thousands of creative individuals, not merely an elite group of highly visible persons." (see (Essays of an Information Scientist: Of Nobel Class, Women in Science, Citation Classics and Other Essays, Vol:15, p.387, 1992-93 , Current Contents, #45, p.5-10, November 8, 1993) http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v15p387y1992-93.pdf ) In the sociology of science further interpretations have been distributed around this fact. 1965 Robert K. Merton wrote a book "On the shoulders of Giants", and in a current comment about this book Derek de Solla Price wrote 1977 "'If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.' The origin of this aphorism, widely attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, ..." (Essays of an Information Scientist, Vol:3, p.176-178, 1977-78 Current Contents, #28, p.5-8, July 11, 1977, see also http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/history/heritagey1998.html ) Instead of speaking of two populations (the "dead" and the "alive") it would be more interesting to follow the exchange processes between these two populations. One might expect that papers change their status due to different citation classics. What is the amount of papers which are traveling between these two populations? What also strikes me was that the intersection point between the two power laws is just at x=50 citations? Is there any explanation that it is just this number? Andrea Dr. Andrea Scharnhorst NERDI Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services (NIWI) KNAW Joan Muyskenweg 25 Postbus 95110 1090 HC Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel: +20 4628 670 www.niwi.knaw.nl/nerdi >>> suppe at PRINCETON.EDU 11/21/02 03:09AM >>> There is a significant new paper filed earlier this month at the physics e- print archive (arxiv.org) by S. Lehmann et al. dealing with the "Citation distributions in high-energy physics" based on data from the SPIRES database. They show that theory, experiment and phenomenology have nearly identical distributions within high-energy physics. The data are qualitatively similar to the ISI data for all of science shown by S. Redner (1998), but the interpretations are perhaps more insightful. {S. Redner. How popular is your paper? an emperical study of the citation distribution. European Physics Journal B, 4:131-4, 1998.} S. Lehmann et al. indicate that a single power-law distribution does not fit the data but a double power-law distribution does, composed of one dominated by no-longer cited papers and a second distribution dominated by still actively cited papers. Additionally they indicate that the most highly cited papers receive fewer than expected citations because they reach canonical status (a point that others have made). The most quotable quote is "The picture which emerges is thus a small number of interesting and significant papers swimming in a sea of "dead" papers." arxiv:physics/0211010 Title: Citation Distributions in High Energy Physics Authors: S. Lehmann, B. Lautrup, A. D. Jackson (The Niels Bohr Institute) Comments: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables Subj-class: Physics and Society pdf available at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0211010 -- -- John Suppe, Department of Geosciences Guyot Hall Princeton University Princeton NJ 08544-1003 (609) 258-4119 office (609) 258-1515 lab (609) 258-1274 fax suppe at princeton.edu http://geoweb.princeton.edu/people/faculty/suppe/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From e.fernandez-polcuch at UNESCO.ORG Thu Nov 21 09:59:23 2002 From: e.fernandez-polcuch at UNESCO.ORG (Ernesto Fernandez Polcuch) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 09:59:23 -0500 Subject: Citation Distributions in High Energy Physics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Don't forget Kuhn's definition of "Normal Science". I've found a brief introduction to this issue in http://www.shef.ac.uk/~phil/courses/312/03kuhn.htm It mentions that "Normal science is 'research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements'. It consists mainly in 'puzzle-solving' within a particular theoretical framework - within a particular paradigm, in Kuhn's terminology. It is a gradual, somewhat derivative activity, filling in the details, elaborating on themes already conceived." This might derive in papers not necessarily highly cited, but certainly not dead, they are part of Science and scientific production, and have their own roles in Science. Scientific activity is too complex to find living and dead papers, just looking for citations! Is the only function of a paper to be cited? I'm not a specialist in Philosophy of Science, so I won't get any further on this. Regards, Ernesto -----Original Message----- From: ASIS Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU]On Behalf Of Andrea Scharnhorst Sent: November 21, 2002 4:57 To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Citation Distributions in High Energy Physics I found just this interpretation of "dead" papers the most problematic in the paper because of the negative image conveyed by the notion "dead". The fact that most of the papers are not cited at all is well known as is the fact that most scientists have a relatively low productivity compared with the few highly productive scientists. Can this fact be turned into a negative evaluation of the papers or scientists sitting on the one edge of a skew distribution? Every scientist build his work on a tremendous part of other papers. They might be well-known or un-know or yet not known. An empirical study in "successive citations" presented by Jan Vlachy 1986 (Jan Vlachy, Scientometrics analyses in physics - where we stand, Czech. J. Phys. B 36 [1986] 1-13, see also Jan Vlachy, Scientometrics 7[1986]505-528) showed 8 different types in time series of citations of physics papers: - initially high recognized -basic recognized -late recognized, innovative -late recognized, longevity -gradually recognized -genial -longevity -repeatedly recognized Having this in mind "dead" turns into "timely dead" or "partly dead" or "periodic dead"... The role of the bulk of less known or un-known scientists was also discussed in the debate around the Ortega hypothesis. 1993 Eugene Garfield wrote reviewing this debate "I was driven to find a way to acknowledge these scientists as well as other "mediocre" researchers, as J. Ortega y Gasset called them. They are not necessarily of Nobel class, but their work provides the foundation for other scientists' groundbreaking discoveries. Ortega y Gasset suggested this hypothesis in his 1932 book The revolt of Masses, stating that science is built on the contributions of thousands of creative individuals, not merely an elite group of highly visible persons." (see (Essays of an Information Scientist: Of Nobel Class, Women in Science, Citation Classics and Other Essays, Vol:15, p.387, 1992-93 , Current Contents, #45, p.5-10, November 8, 1993) http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v15p387y1992-93.pdf ) In the sociology of science further interpretations have been distributed around this fact. 1965 Robert K. Merton wrote a book "On the shoulders of Giants", and in a current comment about this book Derek de Solla Price wrote 1977 "'If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.' The origin of this aphorism, widely attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, ..." (Essays of an Information Scientist, Vol:3, p.176-178, 1977-78 Current Contents, #28, p.5-8, July 11, 1977, see also http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/history/heritagey1998.html ) Instead of speaking of two populations (the "dead" and the "alive") it would be more interesting to follow the exchange processes between these two populations. One might expect that papers change their status due to different citation classics. What is the amount of papers which are traveling between these two populations? What also strikes me was that the intersection point between the two power laws is just at x=50 citations? Is there any explanation that it is just this number? Andrea Dr. Andrea Scharnhorst NERDI Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services (NIWI) KNAW Joan Muyskenweg 25 Postbus 95110 1090 HC Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel: +20 4628 670 www.niwi.knaw.nl/nerdi >>> suppe at PRINCETON.EDU 11/21/02 03:09AM >>> There is a significant new paper filed earlier this month at the physics e- print archive (arxiv.org) by S. Lehmann et al. dealing with the "Citation distributions in high-energy physics" based on data from the SPIRES database. They show that theory, experiment and phenomenology have nearly identical distributions within high-energy physics. The data are qualitatively similar to the ISI data for all of science shown by S. Redner (1998), but the interpretations are perhaps more insightful. {S. Redner. How popular is your paper? an emperical study of the citation distribution. European Physics Journal B, 4:131-4, 1998.} S. Lehmann et al. indicate that a single power-law distribution does not fit the data but a double power-law distribution does, composed of one dominated by no-longer cited papers and a second distribution dominated by still actively cited papers. Additionally they indicate that the most highly cited papers receive fewer than expected citations because they reach canonical status (a point that others have made). The most quotable quote is "The picture which emerges is thus a small number of interesting and significant papers swimming in a sea of "dead" papers." arxiv:physics/0211010 Title: Citation Distributions in High Energy Physics Authors: S. Lehmann, B. Lautrup, A. D. Jackson (The Niels Bohr Institute) Comments: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables Subj-class: Physics and Society pdf available at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0211010 -- -- John Suppe, Department of Geosciences Guyot Hall Princeton University Princeton NJ 08544-1003 (609) 258-4119 office (609) 258-1515 lab (609) 258-1274 fax suppe at princeton.edu http://geoweb.princeton.edu/people/faculty/suppe/index.html From harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK Fri Nov 22 22:28:27 2002 From: harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK (Stevan Harnad) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 03:28:27 +0000 Subject: UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) review In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, David Goodman wrote: > I do not think that the comparison of the eventual value of the > different specialties of scientific research can be judged at the > time the research is being done. "Can only be predicted with XX% reliability" is the statistically sound way of putting it. And both XX and the time-span will vary (with time, and field). Assessors for research funding don't ask for 100% predictive accuracy. They just want something like "Research/Researcher A is more likely than B" (when funds are finite). > That requires historical knowledge as well as scientometrics. Yes, but hindsight is not a predictor (unless it picks out a predictive pattern or index for the next time). > This does imply a certain humility about the ability to use current > knowledge as a valid basis for long term science policy. I don't know about long-term science policy. The RAE just wants some objective help in disbursing support for the next few years. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2373.html > Your second derivative technique, if the data are sufficiently > accurate to support it, sounds like an exceeding nice way of measuring the > potential short-term rise of a scientific field (or department). I would > be reluctant to extrapolate very far into the future with such methods. Extrapolate no further than your time-series correlations suggest you have a statistical basis for extrapolating. > For example, as judged by apparent current productivity, and its apparent > valuation by the scientific world in general, scientometrics does not > show very well. You and I know better, of course. :) The time-line for the betting on scientometrics is still very short, the field being new and its database growing. Its day is fast coming, though, and open-access (along with the scientometric analzers like http://citebase.eprints.org/ ) will help usher it in. Stevan Harnad From Garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Sun Nov 24 21:03:19 2002 From: Garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Garfield, Eugene) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 21:03:19 -0500 Subject: "Garfield's conjecture: Do international journal s have a higher impact factor than German-language journals? " Message-ID: Dear Johannes: Thank you for your help in identifying this article. Now that you have posted the source to the listserv I will have to determine whether I should call attention to it again or in part. We just concluded the Annual meeting of the ASIS&T. With best wishes. Gene Eugene Garfield, PhD. email garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu tel 215-243-2205 fax 215-387-1266 President, The Scientist www.the-scientist.com Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org -----Original Message----- From: Johannes Stegmann [mailto:johannes.stegmann at MEDIZIN.FU-BERLIN.DE] Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 3:54 AM To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] "Garfield's conjecture: Do international journals have a higher impact factor than German-language journals?" At 15:21 19.11.2002 -0500, you wrote: >This article appeared in German. Unfortunately I cannot find the original >german article, nor do I have the full citation for it. If anyone can >identify the author or the original publication, please let me know. > >The translated version follows: > >Garfield's conjecture: Do international journals have a higher impact factor >than German-language journals? > Gene, this is chapter 5.3 of volume 33 of "K?lner Arbeitspapiere zur Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft". The title of this volume 33 is "Informationswissenschaftliche Zeitschriften in szientometrischer Analyse" ("information science journals in scientometric analysis" - my translation). The "author" is "Grazia Colonia" and means a project performed by students of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Austria, and of the Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences) Cologne, Germany. The volume 33 comprises 126 pages and can be downloaded as pdf from http://www.fbi.fh-koeln.de/fachbereich/papers/kabi/volltexte/band033.pdf Best whishes and regards, Johannes ------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Johannes Stegmann Univ. Hospital Benjamin Franklin Free University Berlin Medical Library johannes.stegmann at medizin.fu-berlin.de Hindenburgdamm 30 Tel.: +49 30 8445 2035 12203 Berlin Fax: +49 30 8445 4454 Germany Homepage: http://www.medizin.fu-berlin.de/medbib/home.html From subbiah_a at YAHOO.COM Sun Nov 24 22:52:47 2002 From: subbiah_a at YAHOO.COM (=?iso-8859-1?q?Subbiah=20Arunachalam?=) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 03:52:47 +0000 Subject: Fwd: RE: UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) review Message-ID: Friends: Here is some interesting evidence on the usefulness of citation data in research evaluation. Best wishes. Arun ----- SEPTEMBER98-FORUM at LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG In the recent postings on RAE ratings and scientometrics, I don't believe I've seen anyone cite this piece of research: Andy Smith and Mike Eysenck, "The correlation between RAE ratings and citation counts in psychology" (June 2002) http://psyserver.pc.rhbnc.ac.uk/citations.pdf The authors' summary: We counted the citations received in one year (1998) by each staff member in each of 38 university psychology departments in the United Kingdom. We then averaged these counts across individuals within each department and correlated the averages with the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) grades awarded to the same departments in 1996 and 2001. The correlations were extremely high (up to +0.91). This suggests that whatever the merits and demerits of the RAE process and citation counting as methods of evaluating research quality, the two approaches measure broadly the same thing. Since citation counting is both more costeffective and more transparent than the present system and gives similar results, there is a prima facie case for incorporating citation counts into the process, either alone or in conjunction with other measures. Some of the limitations of citation counting are discussed and some methods for minimising these are proposed. Many of the factors that dictate caution in judging individuals by their citations tend to average out when whole departments are compared. Peter ---------- Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374 Email peters at earlham.edu Web http://www.earlham.edu/~peters Editor, Free Online Scholarship Newsletter http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/ Editor, FOS News blog http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com From harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK Mon Nov 25 07:49:34 2002 From: harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 12:49:34 +0000 Subject: UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) review In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Jan Velterop wrote: > If one assesses an institute's productivity by the papers from its > researchers, and one rates those papers with the help of journal > impact factors, is it not the case that one should expect the results > to be in line with the citation counts for those papers? Is it me > or is there a circular argument here? You're quite right, Jan, and that was precisely the point of my recommendation that the RAE should be transformed into continuous online submission and assessment of online CVs linked to the online full-texts of each researcher's peer-reviewed research articles, self-archived in their university's Eprint Archive: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2373.html Because most of the variance in the RAE rankings is determined by citation impact already anyway! Hence this simple, simplifying transformation would make the RAE cheaper, faster, easier, far less time-wasting for both researchers and assessors, and more accurate (by adding richer online measures of impact, e.g., direct paper/author impact instead of indirect journal impact, plus many other new online scientometric measures such as online usage ["hits"], time-series analyses, co-citation analyses and full-text-based semantic co-analyses, all placed in a weighted multiple regression equation instead of just a univariate correlation). Plus, as a bonus, this RAE change, in exchange for making it cheaper, faster, easier, far less time-wasting for both researchers and assessors, and more accurate, would also help hasten open access -- in the UK as well as world-wide. The sequence was: (i) I conjectured that the RAE might as well go ahead and downsize and streamline itself in this way, dropping all the needless extra baggage of the on-paper returns, because the outcome is already determined mostly by impact ranking anyway: "(5) If someone did a statistical correlation on the numerical outcome of the RAE, using the weighted impact factors of the publications of each department and institution, they would be able to predict the outcome ratings quite closely. (No one has done this exact statistic, because the data are implicit rather than explicit in the returns, but it could be done, and it would be a good idea to do it, just to get a clear indication of where the RAE stands right now, before the simple reforms I am recommending.)" (ii) Then commentators started to respond, including Charles Oppenheim, gently pointing out to me that I am under-informed, and there is no need for me to speculate about this, because the post-hoc analyses HAVE been done, and there is indeed a strong positive correlation between citation impact and RAE outcome! (iii) Peter Suber (and others) cited further confirmatory studies. (iv) So there is nothing circular here. The point was not to RECOMMEND using citation impact, by circularly demonstrating that citation impact was being used already. (v) The point was to downsize, streamline and at the same time strengthen the RAE by making its (existing) dependence on impact ranking more direct and explicit and efficient, (vi) and at the same time enriching its battery of potential impact measures scientometrically, increasing its predictive power (vii) while saving time and money (viii) and leading the planet toward the long overdue objective of open access to all of its peer-reviewed research output. (The only recompense I ask for all this ritual repetition and recasting and clarification I have to keep doing at every juncture is that the the day should come, and soon!) [I am braced for the predictable next round of attacks on scientometric impact analysis: "Citation impact is crude, misleading, circular, biassed: we must assess research a better way!" And ready to welcome these critics (as I do the would-be reformers of peer review) to go ahead and do research on alternative, nonscientometric ways of assessing and ranking large bodies of research output, and to let us all know what they are -- once they have found them, tested them and shown them to predict at least as well as scientometric impact analysis. But in the meanwhile, I will invite these critics (as I do the would-be reformers of peer review) to allow these substantial optimizations of the existing system to proceed apace, rather than holding them back for better (but untested, indeed unknown) alternatives. For in arguing against these optimizations of the existing system, they are not supporting a better way: they are merely arguing for doing what we are doing already anyway, in a much more wasteful way.] Amen, Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html or http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Discussion can be posted to: september98-forum at amsci-forum.amsci.org See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess the Free Online Scholarship Movement: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm the SPARC position paper on institutional repositories: http://www.unites.uqam.ca/src/sante.htm the OAI site: http://www.openarchives.org and the free OAI institutional archiving software site: http://www.eprints.org/ From harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK Mon Nov 25 10:04:52 2002 From: harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 15:04:52 +0000 Subject: UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) review Message-ID: On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Jan Velterop wrote: > A propos of the Research Assessment Exercise, the policy director > (Bahram Bekhradnia) of the Higher Education Funding Council, which > carries out the RAE, recently sent me this response to a question some > of our authors are asking and worrying about the possible significance > of a journal's Impact Factor in the context of the RAE: > > "Where an article is published is an irrelevant issue. A top > quality piece of work, in a freely available medium, should get > top marks. The issue is really that many assessment panels use > the medium of publication, and in particular the difficulty of > getting accepted after peer review, as a proxy for quality. But > that absolutely does not mean that an academic who chooses to > publish his work in an unorthodox medium should be marked down. > At worst it should mean that the panel will have to take rather > more care in assessing it." A rather complicated statement, but meaning, I guess, that the RAE, is assessing quality, and does not give greater weight to paper journal publications than to online journal publications. This is nothing new; it has been its announced policy since at least 1995: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Theschat/0033.html HEFCE Circular RAE96 1/94 para 25c states: "In the light of the recommendations of the Joint Funding Councils' Libraries Review Group Report (published in December 1993) refereed journal articles published through electronic means will be treated on the same basis as those appearing in printed journals." This is the result of adopting the following recommendation in Librev Chapter 7: "289. To help promote the status and acceptability of electronic journals, the Review Group also recommends that the funding councils should make it clear that refereed articles published electronically will be accepted in the next Research Assessment Exercise on the same basis as those appearing in printed journals." But I would be more skeptical about the implication that it is the RAE assessors who review the quality of the submissions, rather than the peer-reviewers of the journals in which they were published. Some spot-checking there might occasionally be, but the lion's share of the assessment burden is borne by the journals' quality levels and impact factors, not the direct review of the papers by the RAE panel! (So the *quality* of the journal still matters: it is the *medium* of the journal -- on-paper or online -- that is rightly discounted by the RAE as irrelevant.) (Hence the suggestion that a "top-quality" work risks nothing in being submitted to an "unorthodox medium" -- apart from reiterating that the medium of the peer-reviewed journal, whether on-line or on-paper, is immaterial -- should certainly not be interpreted by authors as RAE license to bypass peer-review, and trust that the RAE panel will review all (or most, or even more than the tiniest proportion of submissions for spot-checking) directly! Not only would that be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, but it would be an utter waste, given that peer review has already performed that chore once already! > HEFCE clearly recognises the flaws of the RAE methodology used > hitherto, which is the first step towards a more satisfactory > assessment system. What is not clear to me is the question whether > your suggested reform will indeed be saving time and money. It seems to > me that just adding Impact Factors of articles is indeed the shortcut > (proxy for quality) that Bahram refers to, and that anything else will > take more effort. I don't pretend to have any contribution to make > to that discussion on efficiency of the assessment methodology, though. I couldn't quite follow this. Right now, most of the variance in the RAE rankings is predictable from the journal impact factors of the submitted papers. That, in exchange for each university department's preparing a monstrously large portfolio at great time and expense (including photocopies of each paper!). Since I seriously doubt that Bahram meant replacing impact ranking by direct re-review of the all the papers by RAE assessors, I am not quite sure what you think he had in mind! (You say "just adding Impact Factors of articles is indeed the shortcut" but adding them to what, how? If those impact factors currently do most of the work, it is not clear that they need to be *added* to the current wasteful portfolio! Rather, they, or, better still, even richer and more accurate scientometric measures, need to be derived directly. Directly from what? One possibility would be for the RAE to directly data-mine, say ISI's Web of Science: http://wos.mimas.ac.uk/. For that, the UK would need a license to trawl, but that's no problem (we already have one). One problem might be that ISI's coverage is incomplete -- only about 7500 of the planet's 20,000 peer-reviewed are currently covered: in most cases these are the top journals, but not all of them, and some fields are not as well covered as others. But even apart from that, the RAE would still need those online CVs I mentioned, in order to be able to find and analyze the ISI citation data for each author and institution. And then we would be restricted to ISI's current collection and scientometric measures. My own proposal (no less of a shortcut for RAE) is to link the CVs instead to researchers' universities' own Eprint Archives, in which *all* of their peer-reviewed full-texts would be deposited, not just those currently covered by ISI, and on which not only the ISI scientometrics, but many richer, enhanced scientometrics could be done. The burden of self-archiving all the university peer-reviewed research output would not be RAE's -- http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#research-funders-do -- but the distributed burden of the universities themselves (to make sure their staff self-archive all their peer-reviewed research output in the university Eprint Archive) -- http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#institution-facilitate-filling -- but I'll bet that that burden would not only be lighter on universities than the present RAE paperwork burden, but that they will find it multiply recompensed by the many other benefits of open-access it will bring, not the least among them being enhanced impact of their own research output, enhanced access to the research output of others, and perhaps even eventual relief from their serials budget burdens! My own recommendation is accordingly this: since impact factors already bear the lion's share of the assessment/ranking burden, the rest of the complicated and time-consuming RAE submission can be jettisoned, and replaced by online RAE-standardized CVs linked to the online peer-reviewed articles (in the researchers' institutions' Eprint Archives). Scientometric harvesters and analyzers (like http://citebase.eprints.org/ or better) could then do the much richer and more accurate scientometric analysis automatically. Those full-text articles all have reference lists, which then provide the individual papers' and authors' citation counts, plus many, many other potential scientometric measures. That would be a fruitful shortcut indeed. At Southampton we are harvesting the RAE 2001 returns http://www.hero.ac.uk/rae/ into a demo -- RAEprints -- to give a taste of what having a global national open-access research archive would be like, and what possibilities it would open up for research access, impact, and assessment. (For a preview, see: http://www.hyphen.info/ ) Stevan Harnad From harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK Tue Nov 26 10:15:33 2002 From: harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK (Stevan Harnad) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 15:15:33 +0000 Subject: UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) review In-Reply-To: <003e01c2951e$f5914110$141ee89e@who.int> Message-ID: For the sake of communication and moving ahead, I would like to clarify two points of definition (and methodology, and logic) about the terms "research impact" and "scientometric measures": "Research impact" means the measurable effects of research, including everything in the following range of measurable effects: (1) browsed (2) read (3) taught (4) cited (5) co-cited by authoritative sources (6) used in other research (7) applied in practical applications (8) awarded the Nobel Prize All of these (and probably more) are objectively measurable indices of research impact. Research impact is not, and never has been just (4), i.e., not just citation counts, whether average journal citation ratios (the ISI "journal impact factor") or individual paper total or annual citation counts, or individual author total or average or annual citation counts (though citations are certainly important, in this family of impact measures). So when I speak of the multiple regression equation measuring research impact I mean all of the above (at the very least). "Scientometric measures" are the above measures. Scientometric analyses also include time-series analyses, looking for time-based patterns in the individual curves and the interrelations among measures like the above ones -- and much more, to be discovered and designed as the scientometric database consisting of the full text papers, their reference list and their raw data become available for analysis online. One of the principal motivations for the suggested coupling of the research access agenda (open access) with the research impact assessment agenda (e.g., the UK research Assessment Exercise [RAE]) is that there is a symbiosis and synergy between the two: Maximizing research access maximizes potential research impact. Scientometric measures of research impact can monitor and quantify and make explicit and visible the causal connection between access and impact at the same time that they assess it, thereby also making explicit the further all-important connection between research impact and research funding. It is a synergy, because the open-access full-text database also facilitates new developments in scientometric analysis, making the research assessment more accurate and predictive. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2325.html Now on to comments on Chris Zielinski's posting: On Tue, 26 Nov 2002 Chris Zielinski wrote: > This is being offered despite Stevan's being "braced for the predictable > next round of attacks on scientometric impact analysis: 'Citation impact is > crude, misleading, circular, biassed: we must assess research a better > way!'". It remains curious why he acquiesces passively to a poor, biassed > system based on impact analysis rather than searching for "alternative, > nonscientometric ways of assessing and ranking large bodies of research > output" - and indeed seeks to dissuade those who might be doing that. Acquiescing passively to what? There are no alternatives to scientometrics (as Chris goes on to note implicitly below), just richer, less biassed scientometrics, which is precisely what I am recommending! Chris writes as if I were defending the univariate ISI journal-impact factors when I am arguing for replacing it by a far richer multiple regression equation! > Those of us working with developing country journals are well aware of the > inherent biases and vicious circles operating in the world of impact > factors. That is, again, the ISI journal-impact factor (a subset of measure 4 in my [partial] list of 8!). But if there is indeed a bias against developing country journals on measure 4, what better remedy for it than to remove the access barriers on the current visibility, usage and impact of those journals by self-archiving their contents in OAI-compliant Eprint Archives, thereby ensuring that they will be openly accessible to every would-be user with access to the Web! > The circularity Stevan refers to is "You cannot cite what you > haven't read, you tend not to read what is not stocked in your library (or > readily avaialble online), and your library tends not to stock what isn't > cited". Indeed. So forget about relying on your library (and the access tolls it may or may not be able to afford) and make your research openly accessible for free for all by self-archiving it. And if you are in a developing country and you need it, help in doing this is available from the Soros Foundation's Budapest Open Access Initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/ The ISI journal-impact factor's vicious circularity is part of the toll-access circle, which is precisely what open-access and self-archiving are designed to free us from! > This certainly applies to developing country journals, and there is > literature to support this (which - paradoxically - I don't have to hand to > cite), but it also applies everywhere to new journals, local journals and > many open access products. All true, and all relevant: to the urgent need for, and the sure benefits of, self-archiving and open access. What all these papers and their authors need in order to maximize their visibility, uptake and impact is web-wide barrier-free access to their findings for all its potential users worldwide. > Surely those supporting open access should be against impact-factor driven > ranking systems and be searching actively for less-biassed replacements? Who is against research impact (in the full sense described above, as opposed to merely the univariate ISI journal-impact factor)? Who is against measuring research impact (scientometrics)? Who is against maximizing research impact, by maximizing research access and strengthening and enriching research assessment and ranking (on a range of measures, analyzed and weighted to minimize any potential bias)? And what is all this if not scientometric impact analysis? > These need not be "nonscientometric", incidentally - no need for the > suggestion of witchcraft. [Impact factors themselves are more than a tad > sociometric - measurements of the behavioural patterns of researchers - > rather than entirely objective. Is the reason someone cited the British > Medical Journal rather than the Bhutan Medical Journal (assuming she had > access to both) because the first BMJ was better, or more prestigious, than > the second BMJ?] I couldn't follow that: Anything-metric simply means "measured." I assume that if we want research to have an impact, we'd also like to be able to measure that impact. Peer reviewers are the first line of defense, using direct human judgment and expertise as to the quality and hence the potential impact of research. But I assume we don't want to make full peer-review our only impact metric, and to just keep on repeating it (e.g., by the RAE assessors). (It takes long enough to get a paper refereed once!) So what are the other alternatives? And are any of them "non-scientometric"? If they are objective, quantified measures, I can't see that there is any other choice! As to the reason why a researcher might cite a paper in the British Medical Journal rather than the Bhutan Medical Journal: There are many reasons (and lets admit that sometimes some of them really do have to do with quality differences, if only because the Bhutan researchers, far more deprived of research-access than British ones, are unable to do more fully-informed research as a consequence). But surely the fact that most researchers are unlikely to have access to the Bhutan journal's contents is one of the main reasons -- and open access is the remedy for it. Once it's accessible, the BhMJ's own quality can compete for users and citers on a more level playing field with the other BrMJ (and the playing field will be made even more level by reciprocal access to all current research for all researchers, levelling out quality differences owing to information-deprivation because of access-differences). > In fact, Stevan mentions "other new online scientometric measures such as > online usage ["hits"], time-series analyses, co-citation analyses and > full-text-based semantic co-analyses, all placed in a weighted multiple > regression equation instead of just a univariate correlation". Indeed, > impact factors are very crude quasi-scientometric and subjective measures > compared even with such simple information (easy to obtain for online media) > as counts of usage - for example, how many articles have been read but not > cited? I couldn't follow this. These are all scientometric measures I was recommending for inclusion in the multiple regression equation for impact for the online, full-text, open-access database (mandated by the RAE). Where is the disgareement. (And what is the "quasi-"?) > All these are indeed worth pursuing and, I would have thought, right on the > agenda of the OA movement. And, I would have thought, precisely what I was recommending! Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html or http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Discussion can be posted to: september98-forum at amsci-forum.amsci.org See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess the Free Online Scholarship Movement: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm the SPARC position paper on institutional repositories: http://www.unites.uqam.ca/src/sante.htm the OAI site: http://www.openarchives.org and the free OAI institutional archiving software site: http://www.eprints.org/ From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Nov 26 13:09:06 2002 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 13:09:06 -0500 Subject: Padmanaban G. "Has Indian Science Slowed Down?" Current Science, 83(9):1055, November 10 2002 Message-ID: G. Padmanaban : e-mail: geepee at biochem.iisc.ernet.in Title : Has Indian Science Slowed Down? Author: Padmanaban G. Journal Current Science, 83(9):1055, November 10 2002 CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 83, NO. 9, 10 NOVEMBER 2002 1055 Has Indian science slowed down? The article by Arunachalam (Curr. Sci., 2002, 83, 107?108) highlighting the fall in the number of scientific publications from India, while China and Korea have made substantial progress makes news for media, including Nature, but sends somewhat of a superficial message. It is nobody?s case that the universities are in a bad shape and that conclusion does not need macro- or micro-level scientometric parameters. All along (at least for the period under discussion), only about a dozen universities have been active in research, taking life sciences as an example. Bulk of the research publications have been from agency laboratories (CSIR, DST, DBT, DAE, ICMR) and IISc. The mushroom growth of universities, especially the state universities, has only catered to poor teaching and imperfect examination exercise. I wonder whether there is any dramatic solution to change the perspective and ethos of these universities without a political will. On the other hand, it would be of importance to know whether the productivity of agency laboratories and the dozen or so universities that have been traditionally active in research, has come down. It is my perception that the quality of research, at least in life sciences, has substantially improved, thanks to consistent support from DBT, DST, CSIR and other agencies. The frequency of papers published in high impact factor journals seems to have significantly increased, if not in Science and Nature. This, may account for the small decrease in the total number of publications, since the tendency to publish a large number of small papers in inconsequential journals is probably giving way to publishing complete studies in good journals. It would be worthwhile to do an analysis of the papers published in two-dozen top representative journals in each of biology, physics and chemistry from India on a 5-year or 10-year basis for the last 2 or 3 decades, and compare the same with those of China and Korea. One realizes that indices such as impact factor and citation index have their own limitations. For example, a laboratory from India might have published a seminal paper some years ago. But, laboratories in developed countries can quickly exploit the concept and soon write a review on the same topic. Subsequently, everyone quotes the review and the original paper from India is forgotten. Had the original paper been published from a Western laboratory or with a pedigree from such a laboratory, it would have become a citation classic! It is neither my intention to build an alibi for the decrease in scientific output, nor do I want to project a doomsday for Indian science. It is essential to project positive developments in Indian science as well. A matter of concern is the large number of unfilled vacancies and the policy of a ban on recruitment in agency laboratories and progressive universities, which could contribute to lack of infusion of young blood and decreased scientific output. One should concentrate not only on doing good science, but also on taking the leads into useful applications, and the latter is a greater challenge than the former. Most of us settle for the path of least resistance in the name of doing good science. G. PADMANABAN Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India e-mail: geepee at biochem.iisc.ernet.in When responding, please attach my original message _______________________________________________________________________ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266 President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org _______________________________________________________________________ From Chaomei.Chen at CIS.DREXEL.EDU Wed Nov 27 09:07:55 2002 From: Chaomei.Chen at CIS.DREXEL.EDU (Chaomei Chen) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 09:07:55 -0500 Subject: Chen, C. Mapping Scientitfic Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization. Message-ID: Dear Friends and Colleagues, I am pleased to inform you the publication of a new book on the subject of science mapping. Chen, C., Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization London: Springer-Verlag. 2002 XII, 244 pp. 163 figs. 111 in color. Hardcover 1-85233-494-0 Recommended Retail Price: EUR 79,95 * http://www.springer.de/cgi/svcat/search_book.pl?isbn=1-85233-494-0 Mapping Scientific Frontiers examines the history and the latest developments in the quest for knowledge visualization from an interdisciplinary perspective, ranging from theories of invisible colleges and competing paradigms, to practical applications of visualization techniques for capturing intellectual structures, and the rise and fall of scientific paradigms. Containing simple and easy to follow diagrams for modeling and visualization procedures, as well as detailed case studies and real world examples, this is a valuable reference source for researchers and practitioners, such as science policy analysts, funding agencies, consultancy firms, and higher education institutions. It presents 163 illustrations, 111 in colour, including maps, paintings, images, computer visualizations and animations. "Broad-ranging historical review, integrative, inspirational, and visionary. Thoughtfully demonstrates the value of appropriate visualizations in understanding patterns, exploring knowledge sources, and discovering important trends in science." Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland "Pictures are worth a thousand words but as Humpty Dumpy said they mean what we choose them to mean. I forecast that Chen's systematic review of the rich and ambiguous world of science mapping and visualization will become a Citation Classic." Eugene Garfield, President - The Scientist and Chairman Emeritus - Institute for Scientific Information. Keywords: Citation analysis, Domain analysis, History and philosphy of science, Information visualization, Mapping science, Visualizing science Contents: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.- Mapping the Universe.- Mapping the Mind.- Enabling Techniques for Science Mapping.- On the Shoulders of Giants.- Tracing Competing Paradigms.- Tracking Latent Domain Knowledge. With best wishes, Chaomei