Ranking Web of Universities: 2010 July edition

[Jean-Claude Guédon]

I find all this very amusing. As soon as you establish measurements of
quality in one way or another, you are bound to see people adapt to it
to their advantage. For example, because editors want to increase the
impact factors of their journals, they increase the number of review
articles and they ask their authors to cite articles from the journal
itself. We must never forget the ancient links between our species and
chimps - a point that Macchiavelli had clearly understood without
knowing the fact.

This said, there is an accusation here: librarians are said to store
papers originating from outside their institution to improve its
rankings in webometrics... While credible, is this allegation proved or
even provable ? I would love to see real proofs of this beyond anecdotal
rumours (sometimes aka urban myth). Which universities? Since when?
Etc...

The long and the short of this is that there does not exist a simple way
to measure quality. Those who believe there is either delude themselves,
or manipulate others' beliefs.

Jean-Claude Guédon


Le jeudi 25 février 2010 à 10:55 +0100, Isidro F. Aguillo a écrit :

> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> 
> Dear Dr. Kuhn:
> 
> Thank you for your kind message. As supporters of Open Access 
> initiatives, we are in favor of these situations you described. However 
> our paragraphs refer to a completely different situation: librarians 
> that are adding THOUSANDS of papers of authors unrelated with their 
> organization and without any copyright agreement with them. Even worst, 
> the reason for doing that is for increasing their web ranking.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Heinrich C. Kuhn escribió:
> > Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> > http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> >
> > First of all: Thanks!
> >
> > Second: at http://www.webometrics.info/
> > it is written:
> > "
> > We have discovered several universities that are hosting large 
> > numbers of academic papers authored by scientist that do not 
> > belong to those institutions. This is not only unfair, but it 
> > clearly violates copyright of the involved papers.
> > "
> > Please be aware that this is not necessarily so: Such papers
> > may be hosted where they are hosted because
> > -   The author of that paper wished then paper to be 
> >     hosted at the hosting institution and the hosting
> >     institution acted on his wish.
> > -   The license (CC or other) of the paper permits such
> >     hosting and the archive in question is an archive
> >     for a certain subject.
> > -   The author once was a member of the hosting institution.
> >
> >    Best regards
> >
> > Heinrich C. Kuhn
> >
> > +----------------------------------------------
> > |    Dr. Heinrich C. Kuhn
> > |    Seminar fuer Geistesgeschichte und
> > |    Philosophie der Renaissance
> > |    Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
> > |    D-80539 Muenchen / Ludwigstr. 31
> > |    T.: +49-89-2180 2018, F.: +49-89-2180 2907
> > |    http://www.phil-hum-ren.uni-muenchen.de/
> > +----------------------------------------------
> >
> >   
> 
> 




-- 
Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal
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