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

Wed Feb 11 09:59:13 EST 2009

In re Benoit Godin’s comment that “Eugene Garfield’s primary aim was not history but management (of the scientific literature, then science)” I think that you have to take into account the historic period and J.D. Bernal’s influence on Dr. Garfield.  Bernal was advancing a typical Depression-era project of Watson Davis, founder of ASIST, for replacing the scientific journal system with an institute that would provide efficient delivery of documents to scientists specific to their interests.  He proposed this project to the 1948 Royal Society Scientific Information Science Conference but withdrew it after an analysis of Bradford’s Law of Scattering proved its infeasibility to him.  Dr. Garfield initially saw citation indexing as a way around the roadblock to the Bernal/Watson institute for providing efficient document delivery.  You have to understand that he was making his money on a form of Current Contents, which was crude implementation of the basic idea.  One of the first products Dr. Garfield tried to develop was the “personalized journal,” which would have been an efficient implementation.  However, Dr’ Garfield’s own law of concentration proved that citations could not be used for such a purpose and that, when questioned, scientists themselves could not define their subject interests specifically enough for personalized journals—the ultimate triumph of Bradford’s Law.

As an aside, I see Dr. Garfield’s postings on this listserv as something of a return to his intellectual Current Contents roots.

Stephen J. Bensman

LSU Libraries

Louisiana State University

Baton Rouge, LA   70803

USA

notsjb at lsu.edu

From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Jean-Claude Guédon
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 6:18 AM
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Reward or persuasion? The battle to define the meaning of a citation

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For the early history of SCI, Paul Wouters' The Citation Culture cannot be avoided, IMHO (U. of Amsterdam doctoral thesis, n.d.[1999]). 

He also has an article in a festschrift written in the honour of E. Garfield. (The Web of Knowledge (ASIS, 2000)): "Garfield as Alchemist".

Jean-Claude Guédon

Le mardi 10 février 2009 à 21:58 -0500, Godin, Benoît a écrit :

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	Phil,

	As evidence that Eugene Garfield’s primary aim was not history but management (of the scientific literature, then science), see the following article. Note that this article is dated 1966. It is a nice piece of evidence, and needs to be considered alongside Eugene’s own story or recalling of history that you have cited.

	I. H. Sher and E. Garfield (1966), New Tools for Improving and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Research, in M. C. Yovits et al. (eds.), Research Program Effectiveness, New York: Gordon and Breach, pp. 136-146

	Benoît Godin

	Professeur, INRS (Montreal)

	Tel.: 1 (514) 499 4074

	email: benoit.godin at ucs.inrs.ca <blocked::mailto:benoit.godin at ucs.inrs.ca> 

	website: http://www.csiic.ca

________________________________

	From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Phil Davis
	Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 8:35 PM
	To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
	Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Reward or persuasion? The battle to define the meaning of a citation

	In reading the literature, I found two very distinct camps: one arguing from the Mertonian view that citations reflect a type of reward in the form of public recognition, and the other suggesting that citations were no more than rhetorical devices for bolstering one's argument.  The reward camp is well known by people on this list. The persuasion literature is found more in the Science and Technology Studies journals, and for the most-part, is ignored by the reward camp.  There are some who try to reconcile both arguments, and I try to do this in the article (see attached).

	I've received some personal correspondence that I've completely misunderstood Eugene Garfield and his intentions for creating an index based on the citation literature.  In his writings, I saw a compelling argument from the perspective of the historian of science.  I was working entirely from the literature, and did not conduct any interviews with Dr. Garfield.  If I have misunderstood his rationale(s) for the citation index, the confusion is entirely mine.

	--Phil Davis

	B.G. Sloan wrote: 

I hadn't really thought a lot about defining the meaning of a citation as being "reward OR persuasion."

After thinking a bit about how I use citations I think I fall in the "reward AND persuasion" camp rather in either the "reward" OR "persuasion" camps.

When I write papers I use citations as a rhetorical device, which falls into the "persuasion" category. When I track citations to my papers I tend to view them as indicators of quality or impact, which falls into the "reward" category.

Bernie Sloan

Sora Associates

Bloomington, IN

--- On Mon, 2/9/09, Eugene Garfield <garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU> <mailto:garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU>  wrote:

From: Eugene Garfield <garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU> <mailto:garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU> 
Subject: Davis, PM (Davis, Philip M.) Reward or persuasion? The battle to define the meaning of a citation LEARNED PUBLISHING, 22 (1): 5-11 JAN 2009
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Date: Monday, February 9, 2009, 12:30 PM

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E-mail Address: pmd8 at cornell.edu 

Author(s): Davis, PM (Davis, Philip M.)
Title: Reward or persuasion? The battle to define the meaning of a 
citation 

Source: LEARNED PUBLISHING, 22 (1): 5-11 JAN 2009 

Language: English 

Document Type: Article 

KeyWords Plus: SCIENCE; QUALITY; NATIONS; IMPACT; MODEL; TOOL 

Abstract: The history and development of the Science Citation Index (SCI) 
is an ex(example of the power of users in defining and influencing the 
development of a new technology. The SCI was developed as a tool for the 
historian of science for the purpose of tracing die history of ideas, but 
it was appropriated by users for purposes for which it was unintended - as 
a tool for evaluating the literature, individuals, institutions, and 
countries. The development of a citation tool gave rise to a debate over 
what is actually measured by citation. The citation-was-reward camp views 
citations as indicators of quality and impact, whereas the citation-as-
persuasion. oil camp views citations as no more than rhetorical devices. 
While neither view call fully explain how authors use citations, citation-
as-reward prevails as the (dominant interpretation. 

Addresses: Cornell Univ, Dept Commun, Ithaca, NY 14853 USA 

Reprint Address: Davis, PM, Cornell Univ, Dept Commun, 336 Kennedy Hall, 
Ithaca, NY 14853 USA. 

E-mail Address: pmd8 at cornell.edu 

Cited Reference Count: 41 

Times Cited: 0 

Publisher: ASSOC LEARNED PROFESSIONAL SOC PUBL 

Publisher Address: SOUTH HOUSE, THE STREET WORTHING, W SUSSEX BN13 3UU, 
ENGLAND 

ISSN: 0953-1513 

DOI: 10.1087/095315108X378712 

29-char Source Abbrev.: LEARN PUBL 

ISO Source Abbrev.: Learn. Publ. 

Source Item Page Count: 7 

Subject Category: Information Science & Library Science 

ISI Document Delivery No.: 389TM 

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COLE J
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GARFIELD E
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GILBERT GN
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LATOUR B
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	-- 
	Philip M. Davis
	PhD Student
	Department of Communication
	301 Kennedy Hall
	Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
	email: pmd8 at cornell.edu
	phone: 607 255-2124
	https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/~pmd8/resume 

Jean-Claude Guédon
Université de Montréal 

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