From Fredrik.Astrom at LUB.LU.SE Fri Aug 14 05:34:43 2009 From: Fredrik.Astrom at LUB.LU.SE (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Fredrik_=C5str=F6m?=) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:34:43 +0200 Subject: Festschrift for Olle Persson published Message-ID: Please excuse cross-postings Dear friends! In celebration of Professor Olle Perssons recent 60th birthday, a Festschrift was published as a special edition of ISSI's e-newsletter (http://www.issi-society.info/ollepersson60/). The Festschrift was edited by Fredrik ?str?m, Rickard Danell, Birger Larsen and Jesper W Schneider; and contains contributions by: Isabel Iribarren-Maestro, Mar?a Luisa Lascurain-S?nchez & Elias Sanz-Casado Martin Meyer and Wolfgang Gl?nzel Ronald Rousseau Gunnar Sivertsen Mike Thelwall Howard D. White In addition to these contributions, there is also a paper giving an in-depth description on how to work with Olle's software Bibexcel, finally giving us a published text to cite when using Bibexcel; and also, some further support when navigating through the program. All the best, Fredrik From notsjb at LSU.EDU Wed Aug 19 09:45:19 2009 From: notsjb at LSU.EDU (Stephen J Bensman) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:45:19 -0500 Subject: Do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science? Message-ID: Some anti-metric, anti-evaluative screeds making the rounds. Their authors may be members of this listserv. I myself am not so hot on metric evaluations, but the ultimate argument in their favor is that evaluations will be made consciously or unconsciously, and you might as well attempt to quantify the biases as a the first step in obtaining a somewhat more accurate picture. Stephen J. Bensman LSU Libraries Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803 USA notsjb at lsu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------- From: owner-liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Colin Steele Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 3:33 PM To: liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu Subject: Do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science? A long article from Zoe Corbyn, in the British Times Higher Education Supplement for August 13th with the above title has some extremely cogent comments regarding the present situation in academic publishing and the impact of the increasing trends to measure research both individually and institutionally through bibliometric and other numeric processes. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode =407705&c=1 "But have these gatekeepers for what counts as acceptable science become too powerful? Is the system of reward that has developed around them the best for science - and what does the future hold? Unpicking the power of academic and scholarly journals, with their estimated global turnover of at least $5 billion (3 billion UK pounds) a year, is a complex business. There are an estimated 25,000 scholarly peer-reviewed journals in existence, about 15,000 of which cover the science, technical and medical communities.... Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, describes the growth of the importance of citations and impact factors as "divisive" ...If I could get rid of the impact factor tomorrow, I would. I hate it. I didn't invent it and I did not ask for it. It totally distorts decision-making and it is a very, very bad influence on science," he says. Noting that the medical journal articles that get the most citations are studies of randomised trials from rich countries, he speculates that if The Lancet published more work from Africa, its impact factor would go down. "The incentive for me is to cut off completely parts of the world that have the biggest health challenges ... citations create a racist culture in journals' decision-making and embody a system that is only about us (in the developed world)." Corbyn quotes Sir John Sulston: "(Journal metrics) are the disease of our times," says Sir John Sulston, chairman of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, and Nobel prizewinner in the physiology or medicine category in 2002. He is also a member of an International Council for Science committee that last year drafted a statement calling for collective action to halt the uncritical use of such metrics. Sulston argues that the use of journal metrics is not only a flimsy guarantee of the best work (his prize-winning discovery was never published in a top journal), but he also believes that the system puts pressure on scientists to act in ways that adversely affect science - from claiming work is more novel than it actually is to over-hyping, over-interpreting and prematurely publishing it, splitting publications to get more credits and, in extreme situations, even committing fraud. The system also creates what he characterises as an "inefficient treadmill" of resubmissions to the journal hierarchy. The whole process ropes in many more reviewers than necessary, reduces the time available for research, places a heavier burden on peer review and delays the communication of important results. The sting in the tail, he says, is the long list of names that now appears on papers, when it is clear that few of the named contributors can have made more than a marginal contribution. This method provides citations for many, but does little for the scientific enterprise. It is not only scientists but journal editors, too, who see the growing reliance on metrics as extremely damaging, with journals feeling increasing pressure to publish certain work." In this context, the publications of Professor Anne-Wil Harzing at the University of Melbourne are relevant. See her recent article: http://www.harzing.com/download/wkw.pdf 'When Knowledge Wins: Transcending the Sense and Nonsense of Academic Rankings' "Has university scholarship gone astray? Do our academic assessment systems reward scholarship that addresses the questions that matter most to society? Using international business as an example, this article highlights the problematic nature of academic ranking systems and questions if such assessments are drawing scholarship away from its fundamental purpose. The article calls for an immediate examination of existing ratings systems, not only as a legitimate scholarly question vis a vis performance-a conceptual lens with deep roots in management research-but also because the very health and vibrancy of the field are at stake. Indeed, in light of the data presented here, which suggest that current systems are dysfunctional and potentially cause more harm than good, a temporary moratorium on rankings may be appropriate until more valid and reliable ways to assess scholarly contributions can be developed. The worldwide community of scholars, along with the global network of institutions interacting with and supporting management scholarship (such as the Academy of Management, AACSB, and Thomson Reuters Scientific) are invited to innovate and design more reliable and valid ways to assess scholarly contributions that truly promote the advancement of relevant 21st-century knowledge and likewise recognize those individuals and institutions that best fulfill the university's fundamental purpose." Reading these articles and listening to David Prosser from SPARC Europe, in a speech he gave in Canberra at the National Library of Australia on 14 August, reaffirms the view that now is the time to look collectively at new models of funding scholarly communication, rather than simply following, in the digital environment, the historical models of the print environment. If we were to start again, would the model be the same, except for the need for a form of peer review and appropriate reputational branding? One suspects not, and while on this topic, why do libraries still need to give publishers pre-publication interest free 'loans' amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars,euros and pounds for content which may not be delivered to the libraries for up to 12 months. If a fraction of that money was available for realistic projects to work with the academic community and research councils/funding bodies on effective scholarly communication advocacy and new access and distribution models who knows what could be achieved? Best Colin Colin Steele Emeritus Fellow The Australian National University From agrimwade at HISTCITE.COM Wed Aug 19 10:13:18 2009 From: agrimwade at HISTCITE.COM (Alexander Grimwade) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:13:18 -0400 Subject: No subject In-Reply-To: <4928689828488E458AECE7AFDCB52CFEED9912@email003.lsu.edu> Message-ID: NOMAIL From Nsmalheiser at PSYCH.UIC.EDU Wed Aug 19 12:17:29 2009 From: Nsmalheiser at PSYCH.UIC.EDU (Smalheiser, Neil) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:17:29 -0500 Subject: Do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science? In-Reply-To: <4928689828488E458AECE7AFDCB52CFEED9912@email003.lsu.edu> Message-ID: The previous email included this statement: "Sulston argues that the use of journal metrics is not only a flimsy guarantee of the best work (his prize-winning discovery was never published in a top journal),..." Is this true? I extracted the references cited in Sulston's Nobel lecture covering the period of lineage tracing in C. elegans development, that had Sulston as a co-author (below). The lineage raw data may have been circulated in the Worm Breeder's Gazette prior to publication, but the publications are indeed in top journals: Phil. Trans. Royal Soc., Genetics, Developmental Biology, and one in Science. None of these journals could be described as even middle-of-the-road, much less obscure. It should be emphasized that top journals should not be confused with 'high-impact' journals -- certainly Developmental Biology is the best and most credible journal in its field, even though [like almost all specialty journals] its impact factor does not approach the lofty heights. J. G. White, E. Southgate, J. N. Thomson, S. Brenner, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. B. 1976, 275, 327-348. J. E. Sulston, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. B. 1976, 275, 287-297. H. R. Horvitz, J. E. Sulston, Genetics 1990, 126, 287-292. J. E. Sulston, H. R. Horvitz, Dev. Biol. 1977, 56, 110-156. J. E. Sulston, D. G. Albertson, J. N. Thomson, Dev. Biol. 1980, 78, 542-576. J. E. Sulston, J. G. White, Dev. Biol. 1980, 78, 577-597. H. R. Horvitz, J. E. Sulston, Genetics 1980, 96, 435-454. J. E. Sulston, H. R. Horvitz, Dev. Biol. 1981, 82, 41-55. E. M. Hedgecock, J. E. Sulston, J. N. Thomson, Science 1983, 220, 1277-1279. J. E. Sulston, E. Schierenberg, J. G. White, J. N. Thomson, Dev. Biol. 1983, 100, 64-119. From mw at UNI-BIELEFELD.DE Thu Aug 20 08:45:01 2009 From: mw at UNI-BIELEFELD.DE (Matthias Winterhager) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:45:01 +0200 Subject: job announcement Message-ID: 3 PhD positions (part-time 50%) 1 Scientific Assistant (full time) Details see attachment. -- Matthias Winterhager Bielefeld University P.O.Box 10 01 31 33501 Bielefeld Germany -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jobs_english.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 21441 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jobs_deutsch.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 20776 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dwolfram at UWM.EDU Fri Aug 21 21:25:56 2009 From: dwolfram at UWM.EDU (Dietmar Wolfram) Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:25:56 -0500 Subject: Metrics 2009 Pre-conference Symposium at t he ASIS&T Annual Meeting =?utf-8?Q?=E2=80=93?= November 7, 2009 In-Reply-To: <223747080.2744431250904193336.JavaMail.root@mail01.pantherlink.uwm.edu> Message-ID: [Apologies for any cross-postings] Please join us at the Metrics 2009 Pre-Conference Symposium at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Vancouver on Saturday, November 7, 2009. A final program is attached in PDF format. A text-only version appears below. Registration is $75 for ASIS&T and ISSI members. Ten research papers on a range of ?metrics topics will be presented by an international group of speakers. Registrants will receive electronic access to the presented papers. For more information, please visit http://www.sois.uwm.edu/MetricsPreCon/ To register for this event, visit the ASIS&T Annual Meeting registration web page at: http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM09/register.html ==================================================================== Metrics 2009 Program 9:00 ? 9:30 am Welcome ? Dr. Ronald Rousseau, President of ISSI Introduction ? Dr. Eugene Garfield, Founder & Chairman Emeritus, Institute for Scientific Information 9:30 ? 10:30 am Research Datasets for Informetrics Combining Commercial and Open Access Citation Databases to Delimit Highly Interdisciplinary Research Fields for Citation Analysis Andreas Strotmann & Dangzhi Zhao, University of Alberta, Canada Public Sharing of Research Datasets: A Pilot Study of Associations Heather Piwowar & Wendy Chapman, University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A. 10:30 ? 11:00 am Break 11:00 am -12:30 pm Disciplinary Studies Core Journal Literatures and Persistent Research Themes in an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field: Exploring the Literature of Evolutionary Developmental Biology Katherine McCain, Drexel University, U.S.A. Diffusion of Latent Semantic Analysis as a Research Tool: A Social Network Analysis Approach Yasar Tonta & Hamid R. Darvish, Hacettepe University, Turkey A Theoretical Discussion of Prathap?s h2-index for Institutional Evaluation with an Application in the Field of HIV Infection and Therapy Ronald Rousseau, KHBO (Association K.U.Leuven), Industrial Sciences and Technology, Belgium Lying Yang & Ting Yue, National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Science, China 12:30 ? 1:30 pm Lunch on your own 1:30 ? 3:00 pm Visualization & Clustering Academic Spectrum: A Visualizing Method for Research Assessment Fred Y. Ye, Zhejiang University, China North America Academic Web Space: Multicultural Canada vs. The United States Homogeneity Jos? Luis Ortega, VICYT-CSIC, Spain Isidro F. Aguillo, CVHS-CSIC, Spain Subject Clustering Analysis Based on ISI Category Classification Lin Zhang, Xinhai Liu, Frizo Janssens & Wolfgang Gl?nzel, K.U. Leuven, Belgium 3:00 ? 3:30 pm Break 3:30 ? 4:30 pm Journal Studies Rankings of Information and Library Science Journals by JIF and by h-type Indices Judit Bar-Ilan, Bar-Ilan University, Israel Measuring a Journal?s Input Rhythm Based on its Publication-reference Matrix Liming Liang, Institute for Science, Technology and Society, Henan Normal University, China Ronald Rousseau, KHBO (Association K.U.Leuven), Industrial Sciences and Technology, Belgium 4:30 ? 5:00 pm Discussion ? Next Steps, Future Symposia 5:30 pm Dutch Treat Dinner ? Location TBA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Metrics 2009 Program.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 15541 bytes Desc: not available URL: From chessnic at COMPUSERVE.COM Sat Aug 22 11:37:49 2009 From: chessnic at COMPUSERVE.COM (chessnic at COMPUSERVE.COM) Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 11:37:49 -0400 Subject: Fwd: Do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science? In-Reply-To: <8CBEF49F30E2D8C-DB8-205@angweb-usd004.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: Speaking of biases, the Zoe Corbyn article is typical of the dust too often raised in the cold war waged by university bureaucrats against science associations for control of academia. Attacking journals is meant to undermine the financial power of the associations. Some university managers would like to eliminate journals as a too-costly interface between authors and readers. At times, both sides scapegoat commercial publishers that compete with the associations' journals. At other times, it is the associations that suffer. A variety of editors and librarians, as quoted by Ms. Corbyn, shill for university budgetistas. Twenty years ago, major news organizations in the US were embarrassed to learn how they were used as they failed to check out an unsigned report on the economics of scientific journals. The threat to scientific communication is far more profound than Corbyn's naive complaints about twits, copyrights, and metrics. The economic underpinning of science publishing -- i.e. the research libraries that buy journals -- has stagnated far behind the robust growth of academic R&D (which generates journal papers). These metrics are easily available for anyone interested. This inequity leaves some editors to reject perfectly good papers while the PHYSICAL REVIEW, for example, accepts whatever research papers meet its editorial standards. It leaves librarians looking for metrics to guide their cancellation programs and publishers treading water in their wake. Science publishers are responsible for the integrity of the scientific record. Operating with scant resources, the first publishers took great risks in search of a personal profit. There is nothing to stop anyone from getting into the business. If anyone believes they can make a better journal, I say, Go for it. However, the obvious solution to the threat to scientific communication is to raise library spending to keep pace with production of journal articles. University managers like their profits too much (and care about their integrity too little) to do it without government insistence. Albert Henderson, former Editor PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=407705&c=1 -----Original Message----- From: Stephen J Bensman To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Sent: Wed, Aug 19, 2009 9:45 am Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science? Some anti-metric, anti-evaluative screeds making the rounds. Their authors may be members of this listserv. I myself am not so hot on metric evaluations, but the ultimate argument in their favor is that evaluations will be made consciously or unconsciously, and you might as well attempt to quantify the biases as a the first step in obtaining a somewhat more accurate picture. Stephen J. Bensman LSU Libraries Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803 USA notsjb at lsu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------- From: owner-liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Colin Steele Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 3:33 PM To: liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu Subject: Do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science? A long article from Zoe Corbyn, in the British Times Higher Education Supplement for August 13th with the above title has some extremely cogent comments regarding the present situation in academic publishing and the impact of the increasing trends to measure research both individually and institutionally through bibliometric and other numeric processes. [snip] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jzus at ZJU.EDU.CN Sat Aug 22 22:36:54 2009 From: jzus at ZJU.EDU.CN (jzus) Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:36:54 +0800 Subject: Fwd: Do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science? Message-ID: against science associations for control of academia. Attacking journals is meant to undermine the financial power of the associations. Some university managers would like to eliminate journals as a too-costly interface between authors and readers. At times, both sides scapegoat commercial publishers that compete with the associations' journals. At other times, it is the associations that suffer. A variety of editors and librarians, as quoted by Ms. Corbyn, shill for university budgetistas. Twenty years ago, major news organizations in the US were embarrassed to learn how they were used as they failed to check out an unsigned report on the economics of scientific journals. The threat to scientific communication is far more profound than Corbyn's naive complaints about twits, copyrights, and metrics. The economic underpinning of science publishing -- i.e. the research libraries that buy journals -- has stagnated far behind the robust growth of academic R&D (which generates journal papers). These metrics are easily available for anyone interested. This inequity leaves some editors to reject perfectly good papers while the PHYSICAL REVIEW, for example, accepts whatever research papers meet its editorial standards. It leaves librarians looking for metrics to guide their cancellation programs and publishers treading water in their wake. Science publishers are responsible for the integrity of the scientific record. Operating with scant resources, the first publishers took great risks in search of a personal profit. There is nothing to stop anyone from getting into the business. If anyone believes they can make a better journal, I say, Go for it. However, the obvious solution to the threat to scientific communication is to raise library spending to keep pace with production of journal articles. University managers like their profits too much (and care about their integrity too little) to do it without government insistence. Albert Henderson, former Editor PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=407705&c=1 -----Original Message----- From: Stephen J Bensman To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Sent: Wed, Aug 19, 2009 9:45 am Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science? Some anti-metric, anti-evaluative screeds making the rounds. Their authors may be members of this listserv. I myself am not so hot on metric evaluations, but the ultimate argument in their favor is that evaluations will be made consciously or unconsciously, and you might as well attempt to quantify the biases as a the first step in obtaining a somewhat more accurate picture. Stephen J. Bensman LSU Libraries Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803 USA notsjb at lsu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------- From: owner-liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Colin Steele Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 3:33 PM To: liblicense-l at lists.yale.edu Subject: Do academic journals pose a threat to the advancement of science? A long article from Zoe Corbyn, in the British Times Higher Education Supplement for August 13th with the above title has some extremely cogent comments regarding the present situation in academic publishing and the impact of the increasing trends to measure research both individually and institutionally through bibliometric and other numeric processes. [snip] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jzus at ZJU.EDU.CN Sat Aug 22 22:37:21 2009 From: jzus at ZJU.EDU.CN (=?utf-8?B?anp1cw==?=) Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:37:21 +0800 Subject: Metrics 2009 Pre-conference Symposium at t he ASIS&T Annual Meeting =?utf-8?Q?=E2=80=93?= November 7, 2009 Message-ID: Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html [Apologies for any cross-postings] Please join us at the Metrics 2009 Pre-Conference Symposium at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Vancouver on Saturday, November 7, 2009. A final program is attached in PDF format. A text-only version appears below. Registration is $75 for ASIS&T and ISSI members. Ten research papers on a range of ?metrics topics will be presented by an international group of speakers. Registrants will receive electronic access to the presented papers. For more information, please visit http://www.sois.uwm.edu/MetricsPreCon/ To register for this event, visit the ASIS&T Annual Meeting registration web page at: http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM09/register.html ==================================================================== Metrics 2009 Program 9:00 ? 9:30 am Welcome ? Dr. Ronald Rousseau, President of ISSI Introduction ? Dr. Eugene Garfield, Founder & Chairman Emeritus, Institute for Scientific Information 9:30 ? 10:30 am Research Datasets for Informetrics Combining Commercial and Open Access Citation Databases to Delimit Highly Interdisciplinary Research Fields for Citation Analysis Andreas Strotmann & Dangzhi Zhao, University of Alberta, Canada Public Sharing of Research Datasets: A Pilot Study of Associations Heather Piwowar & Wendy Chapman, University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A. 10:30 ? 11:00 am Break 11:00 am -12:30 pm Disciplinary Studies Core Journal Literatures and Persistent Research Themes in an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field: Exploring the Literature of Evolutionary Developmental Biology Katherine McCain, Drexel University, U.S.A. Diffusion of Latent Semantic Analysis as a Research Tool: A Social Network Analysis Approach Yasar Tonta & Hamid R. Darvish, Hacettepe University, Turkey A Theoretical Discussion of Prathap?s h2-index for Institutional Evaluation with an Application in the Field of HIV Infection and Therapy Ronald Rousseau, KHBO (Association K.U.Leuven), Industrial Sciences and Technology, Belgium Lying Yang & Ting Yue, National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Science, China 12:30 ? 1:30 pm Lunch on your own 1:30 ? 3:00 pm Visualization & Clustering Academic Spectrum: A Visualizing Method for Research Assessment Fred Y. Ye, Zhejiang University, China North America Academic Web Space: Multicultural Canada vs. The United States Homogeneity Jos? Luis Ortega, VICYT-CSIC, Spain Isidro F. Aguillo, CVHS-CSIC, Spain Subject Clustering Analysis Based on ISI Category Classification Lin Zhang, Xinhai Liu, Frizo Janssens & Wolfgang Gl?nzel, K.U. Leuven, Belgium 3:00 ? 3:30 pm Break 3:30 ? 4:30 pm Journal Studies Rankings of Information and Library Science Journals by JIF and by h-type Indices Judit Bar-Ilan, Bar-Ilan University, Israel Measuring a Journal?s Input Rhythm Based on its Publication-reference Matrix Liming Liang, Institute for Science, Technology and Society, Henan Normal University, China Ronald Rousseau, KHBO (Association K.U.Leuven), Industrial Sciences and Technology, Belgium 4:30 ? 5:00 pm Discussion ? Next Steps, Future Symposia 5:30 pm Dutch Treat Dinner ? Location TBA __________ NOD32 2257 (20070511) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Metrics 2009 Program.pdf Type: application/octet-stream Size: 15542 bytes Desc: not available URL: