Reward or persuasion? The battle to define the meaning of a citation

[Howard White]

Hello, All,

The thing I feel bad about in Phil Davis's piece is a rather spectacular
failure in his literature search.  He missed my long 2004 article in
Scientometrics with the title "Reward, Persuasion, and the Sokal
Hoax:  A Study in Citation Identities."  This is not to say he did not
cite many of the right things, but my article is so relevant to his, in
both the arguments and the empirical data it presents, that I really
think not taking it explicitly into account was a major omission.  It
appeared in the issue of Scientometrics devoted to Merton's work
and addresses both the Mertonian "reward" and the social constructivist
"persuasion" positions in considerable detail. It critiques many of
the same studies he cites. It also runs counter to his belief that "the
persuasion literature...for the most part, is ignored by the reward camp"
and might even have helped him avoid some of the misunderstandings
he is now being taxed with. 

For those who are interested in the "reward" vs. "persuasion debate and
who might have missed it, I have added the abstract below. Although
the abstract makes it seem a bit wonky, it's one of my livelier writings.
 

TI- Reward, persuasion, and the Sokal Hoax: A study in citation identities|
AV- ABSTRACT AVAILABLE|
LA- English|
AU- White HD (REPRINT)|
CS- Drexel Univ, Coll Informat Sci & Technol, Philadelphia//PA/19104
    (REPRINT); Drexel Univ, Coll Informat Sci &
    Technol, Philadelphia//PA/19104|
GL- USA|
JN- SCIENTOMETRICS, 2004, V60, N1, P93-120|
PU- KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBL, VAN GODEWIJCKSTRAAT 30, 3311 GZ DORDRECHT,
    NETHERLANDS|
SN- 0138-9130|
PY- 2004|
DT- Article|
NR- 55|
SF- SciSearch|
SC- INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE|
AB- A citation identity is a list of an author's citees ranked by how
    frequently that author has cited them in publications covered by the
    Institute for Scientific Information. The same Dialog software that
    creates identities can simultaneously show the overall citation counts
    of citees,which indicate their reputations. Using identities for 28
    authors in several disciplines of science and scholarship, I show that
    the reputational counts of their citees always have an approximately
    log-normal distribution: citations to very famous names are roughly
    balanced by citations to obscure ones, and most citations go to authors
    of middling reputation. These results undercut claims by
    constructivists that the main function of citation is to marshal
    "big-name" support for arguments at the expense of crediting
    lesser-known figures. The results are better explained by Robert K.
    Merton's norm of universalism, which holds that citers are rewarding
    use of relevant intellectual property, than by the constructivists'
    particularism, which holds that citers are trying to persuade through
    manipulative rhetoric. A universalistic citation pattern appears even
    in Alan Sokal's famous hoax article, where some of his citing was
    deliberately particularistic. In fact, Sokal's basic adherence to
    universalism probably helped his hoax succeed, which suggests the
    strength of the Mertonian norm. In specimen cases, the constructivists
    themselves are shown as conforming to it.|

ID- KeyWord Plus(R): ORTEGA HYPOTHESIS;  CITER MOTIVATIONS;  SCIENCE;
    BEHAVIOR;  AUTHORS;  MODEL;  FACTS|
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*||