From katy at INDIANA.EDU Sun Oct 3 19:43:51 2010 From: katy at INDIANA.EDU (Katy Borner) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2010 19:43:51 -0400 Subject: Atlas of Science Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugene.garfield at THOMSONREUTERS.COM Sun Oct 3 20:54:09 2010 From: eugene.garfield at THOMSONREUTERS.COM (Eugene Garfield) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2010 19:54:09 -0500 Subject: FW: The Outgrow Index by Rousseau Message-ID: The Outgrow Index (OI) suggested by Rousseau and Hu ranks a target paper by comparing its citation count to that of the papers it cites. If the target paper is cited more than each of the papers it cites, then its OI will be close to 1 (but always below 1). If the target paper is cited less than the papers it cites, the OI will be 0. It is very difficult if not impossible to say whether the OI is meaningful in estimating the importance of the target paper. A good and important publication may chance to cite a few citation classics. Then its OI will be low. If the target paper cites only descriptive papers (which are poorly cited), then its OI will be close to 1. Thus, the paper by Rousseau and Hu suggest a quantitative insex based on the citation values of the target paper and the papers this target paper cites, but its meaning for evaluative purposes is as yet uncertain Authors: Rousseau, Ronald Hu, Xiaojun Issue Date: Sep-2010 pages 288-291 Publisher: NISCAIR-CSIR, India Abstract: Proposes a relative index measuring the amount by which an article outgrows, in terms of citations, the publications on which it is based. The study involves citations collected from Web of Science during the last week of April 2010 along with the number of citations received (also in WoS) by each of the references. From ronald.rousseau at KHBO.BE Mon Oct 4 01:38:06 2010 From: ronald.rousseau at KHBO.BE (Ronald Rousseau) Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 07:38:06 +0200 Subject: FW: The Outgrow Index by Rousseau and Hu In-Reply-To: <60A566EBCC5878458AE3B2818CA6F3EC02864416@TSHUSMNNADMBX05.ERF.THOMSON.COM> Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Thanks to Gene for his short analysis of our article. We completely agree with his analysis. Yet, our indicator is not meant to be used for evaluative purposes. It is rather meant as a way of positioning a paper (concretely with respect to its references). As this position changes over time we have, in a follow-up paper, studied time series of outgrown indices. Best regards, Ronald Rousseau > > > The Outgrow Index (OI) suggested by Rousseau and Hu ranks a target > paper by comparing its citation count to that of the papers it > cites. If the target paper is cited more than each of the papers it > cites, > then its OI will be close to 1 (but always below 1). If the target paper > is > cited less than the papers it cites, the OI will be 0. > > It is very difficult if not impossible to say whether the OI is > meaningful in estimating the importance of the target paper. A good and > important publication may chance to cite a few citation classics. Then > its OI will be low. If the target paper cites only descriptive papers > (which are poorly cited), then its OI will be close to 1. > > Thus, the paper by Rousseau and Hu suggest a quantitative insex based > on the citation values of the target paper and the papers this target > paper cites, but its meaning for evaluative purposes is as yet > uncertain > > Authors: > Rousseau, Ronald > Hu, Xiaojun > > Issue Date: Sep-2010 pages 288-291 > > Publisher: NISCAIR-CSIR, India > > Abstract: > > Proposes a relative index measuring the amount by which an article > outgrows, in terms of citations, the publications on which it is based. > The study involves citations collected from Web of Science during the > last week of April 2010 along with the number of citations received > (also in WoS) by each of the references. > > > > > > > > -- Ronald Rousseau President of the ISSI KHBO - Association K.U.Leuven Industrial Sciences and Technology Zeedijk 101 - 8400 Oostende, Belgium Professor associated to K.U.Leuven Guest Professor Antwerp University, IBW Honorary Professor Henan Normal University (Xinxiang, China) Adjunct professor of Shanghai University Guest Professor at the National Library of Sciences CAS (Beijing) Guest Professor at Dalian University of Technology Honorary researcher at Zhejiang University, Information Resources Management Institute E-mail: ronald.rousseau at khbo.be web page: http://users.telenet.be/ronald.rousseau Technical skill is mastery of complexity while creativity is mastery of simplicity (E.C. Zeeman) ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. From katy at INDIANA.EDU Tue Oct 5 16:32:07 2010 From: katy at INDIANA.EDU (katy) Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 16:32:07 -0400 Subject: Scientific Data Sharing/Trading Message-ID: Dear all, I am interested to read up on what is known about how researchers share scientific data. * Under what conditions do researchers share scientific data freely, e.g., using a Creative Commons license? * When do they 'trade' data for money, citations, etc. and how do they initiate and execute these transactions? * When do they decide not to share? * What 'marketplaces' for scientific data exchange exist today? Pointers to relevant papers, reports, web sites would be much appreciated. There might also be research that looks into the sharing/trading of resources, facilities, tools, space, students, etc. relevant for understanding how researchers share data. Thank you all, k -- Katy Borner Victor H. Yngve Professor of Information Science Director, CI for Network Science Center, http://cns.slis.indiana.edu Curator, Mapping Science exhibit, http://scimaps.org School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University Wells Library 021, 1320 E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA Phone: (812) 855-3256 Fax: -6166 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hpiwowar at GMAIL.COM Tue Oct 5 17:00:14 2010 From: hpiwowar at GMAIL.COM (Heather Piwowar) Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 14:00:14 -0700 Subject: Scientific Data Sharing/Trading In-Reply-To: <4CAB8B47.8060206@indiana.edu> Message-ID: Hi Katy, Music to my ears :) I do research in this area. You can see my papers and related PhD dissertation on Mendeley-- the references point to great prior work by McCain, Campbell, Hedstrom, Craigin, too many to list. I'm also keeping track of articles about data sharing and withholding in a public Mendeley bibliography group collection. Apologies because the citations aren't well tagged and contain metadata errors. That said, it has a lot of browsing fodder :) Let me know I can help point you to anything more specific? Please contribute to the collection too (Mendeley just changed how they handle group papers, but we'll figure it out). For current research, keep an eye on the oa.data tag by the OATP project. ( tumblr , twitter ) I'm looking forward to hearing other responses! Heather -- Heather Piwowar ** ** ** ** ** * DataONE postdoc with NESCent and Dryad ** remote from Dept of Zoology, UBC, Vancouver Canada ** hpiwowar at nescent.org **** http://researchremix.org ****@researchremix * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Christina.Pikas at JHUAPL.EDU Tue Oct 5 17:10:42 2010 From: Christina.Pikas at JHUAPL.EDU (Pikas, Christina K.) Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 17:10:42 -0400 Subject: Scientific Data Sharing/Trading In-Reply-To: <4CAB8B47.8060206@indiana.edu> Message-ID: Hi- Are you familiar with Heather Piwowar's dissertation work? Her page links to her works and also those she has collected on the topic: http://www.researchremix.org/wordpress/ Christina ---- Christina K Pikas Librarian The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Christina.Pikas at jhuapl.edu (240) 228 4812 (DC area) (443) 778 4812 (Baltimore area) From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu] On Behalf Of katy Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2010 4:32 PM To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Scientific Data Sharing/Trading Dear all, I am interested to read up on what is known about how researchers share scientific data. * Under what conditions do researchers share scientific data freely, e.g., using a Creative Commons license? * When do they 'trade' data for money, citations, etc. and how do they initiate and execute these transactions? * When do they decide not to share? * What 'marketplaces' for scientific data exchange exist today? Pointers to relevant papers, reports, web sites would be much appreciated. There might also be research that looks into the sharing/trading of resources, facilities, tools, space, students, etc. relevant for understanding how researchers share data. Thank you all, k -- Katy Borner Victor H. Yngve Professor of Information Science Director, CI for Network Science Center, http://cns.slis.indiana.edu Curator, Mapping Science exhibit, http://scimaps.org School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University Wells Library 021, 1320 E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA Phone: (812) 855-3256 Fax: -6166 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From notsjb at LSU.EDU Thu Oct 7 16:07:39 2010 From: notsjb at LSU.EDU (Stephen J Bensman) Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 15:07:39 -0500 Subject: Destruction of the Continental School Message-ID: More fun from my book. Some of you may not like what is written, but it expresses what I consider the truth. I am a ?Tea Party conservative? for what I consider very good reasons, having earned a doctorate in Russian history. You thankfully won?t get any more, because it becomes highly technical after this but this, I think, many will find interesting. Stephen J. Bensman LSU Libraries Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803 USA notsjb at lsu.edu 6. Creating the Stochastic Models: The Melding of British and Continental Statistics The State of Statistical and Probabilistic Theory at the Turn of the 20th Century Salsburg (2001, p. 17) ascribes revolutionary importance to Pearson?s system of skew distributions. According to him, before Pearson, the ?things? that science dealt with were real and palpable such as planets moving in space, blood coursing through veins, and as well as chemical elements and compounds. However, according to him, Pearson proposed that such observable phenomena are only random reflections and that what is real is the probability distribution. In Salsburg?s view, the real ?things? of science became not things we can observe and hold but mathematical functions describing the randomness of what we can observe. Therefore, what is necessary to determine in a scientific investigation are the parameters of the distribution. What Pearson failed to realize, according to Salsburg, was that these parameters could never really be determined but only estimated from the data. This is somewhat ironic, given Pearson?s philosophical idealism, whereby observable phenomena?such as statistics?are merely external manifestations or mental constructs of Ideas?such as parameters. In an invited address to an American Statistical Association annual meeting Neyman (1960) portrayed the history of statistics as a succession of stages in the study of ?indeterminism .? He defined such study as follows: The words ?indeterministic study??designate research aiming to determine how frequently a quantity X characterizing the phenomena considered assumes its various particular values. If the purpose of research is to establish the exact value of X as a function of other variables, then this research is ?deterministic.? p. 625. From this perspective Neyman defined the first stage as the period of ?marginal indeterminism.? This was the period symbolized by the names Laplace and Gauss, in which research in science was all deterministic with just one domain, that of errors of measurement, treated indeterministically. Neyman called the second stage the period of ?static indeterminism,? and it covered roughly the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. This period was symbolized by Edgeworth, Galton, Karl Pearson, and others. Here the main subject of study was a ?population,? and efforts were made to develop systems of frequency curves to describe analytically the empirical distributions. The third discernible stage, according to Neyman, lasted roughly from 1920 to 1940, and could be termed the period of ?static indeterministic experimentation. Its leading figure was R. A. Fisher, and the typical problem considered was whether two given populations have the same distributions of X. This problem led to the development of tests of statistical hypotheses and estimation. Neyman played a major role in the transition from the second to the third stage, and he considered Pearson?s system of skew curves of the utmost importance. In a seminal article, in which he systematically employed the term ?contagious distribution? for the first time in the English language (Douglas, 1982), Neyman (1939) assessed the importance of the Pearson curves in the following manner: ?[The Pearson curves]?are very important?because of the empirical fact, that it is but rarely that we find in practice an empirical distribution, which could not be satisfactorily fitted by any of such curves. Consequently, wishing to deduce some test applicable in this or that case, we may usefully assume that the basic distribution is one of the Pearson system and, owing to the frequently continuous character of the connection between the conditions and the final results, our final formula will be approximately valid when applied to the data under consideration. p. 55. However, the Pearson curves were merely descriptive mathematical graduation curves logically requiring a further step. After stipulating that the theoretical distribution must satisfactorily fit the empirical data, Neyman set forth this further step by declaring, ?But we may legitimately require something else: an ?explanation? of the machinery producing the empirical distributions of a given kind? (p. 55). He put ?explanation? in quotation marks to symbolize that mathematics deals with the conceptual sphere that is quite distinct from the perceptual and, therefore, cannot produce a real explanation of phenomena but only ?some ?interpolation formula,? some system of conceptions and hypotheses, the consequences of which are approximately similar to the observable facts? (p. 55). The ?machinery? called for by Neyman was created in a process of melding Continental into British statistics. This melding was marked by two major achievements. First, the Lexis Ratio was incorporated into the chi-squared test initially created by Karl Pearson and further developed by R. A. Fisher to determine the goodness of fit of empirical data to a theoretical distribution. Second, the Poisson process, whose importance was first recognized by Bortkiewicz, was integrated with elements of the Pearson curve system to create stochastic models for the compound and contagious distributions that underlie information science and scientometrics. Together these two achievements enable one to posit and identify the stochastic processes operative in these fields. The melding of Continental statistics into British statistics was facilitated by the devastation of the former resulting from the rise of murderous totalitarian regimes first in Russia and then in Germany. ?arkovic? (1956) described what happened in Russia thus: ?political considerations became an increasingly pronounced factor in the development of Russia?s statistics. This brought about the gradual disappearance of the use of theory in the practical activity of the statistical administration. In the late thirties Vestnik statistiki began to close its pages to papers in which statistical problems were dealt with mathematically. At the end of that period they disappeared completely and have not appeared since. The result of this new trend was that statisticians abandoned practice to continue their work at the universities and other scientific institutions where they pursued statistics under the name of some other subject. Officially, Romanovsky, Kolmogorov, Smirnov and many others are mathematicians divorced from statistics?. According to official views, statistics became an instrument for planning the national economy. Consequently, its basis is the Marx-Lenin political economy; it represents a social science or, in other works, a class science. The law of large numbers, the idea of random deviations, and everything else belonging to the mathematical theory of statistics were swept away as the constituent elements of the false universal theory of statistical science?. p. 338. As orthodox Marxist theory descended on Soviet statistics, the numbers generated by the Central Statistical Administration and its successors became more and more suspect. Murray Feshbach, the expert on Soviet demography at the US Census Bureau, stated that Soviets held back census and other data, because the results were so implicitly negative to the Russian leadership (Murphy, 1983, p. 51). Feshbach was one the first to uncover Soviet demographic problems in the form of high infant mortality and declining life expectancies, and his analyses were eagerly sought by the Russians themselves. In a recent evaluation of the current situation Feshbach (2008: see URL below) expressed the opinion that the Russian tragedy is http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301976.html happening inexorably, that Russian society may be actually weaker than it was in Soviet times, and that the decades since the breakup of the Soviet Union have witnessed an appalling deterioration in the health of the Russian population. The damage done by Communism may have been permanent. The Bolshevik attack on statistics did not stop with the economy. Statistics had largely developed as the handmaiden of genetics, and Stalin embraced Trofim Lysenko?s anti-Mendelian theories on the inheritability of acquired characteristics. In 1940 Lysenko became director of the Institute of Genetics, and, as Salsburg (2001, p. 149) reports, biologists trying to follow R. A. Fisher?s work in mathematical genetics were discouraged or even sent to prison. One of Lysenko?s victims of was the noted botanist and geneticist, Nikolai Vavilov, who had collaborated with the British Mendelian, Bateman. Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died of malnutrition in the camps in 1943. Genetics were also instrumental in the destruction of Continental statistics in Germany, where Nazi race theory can be described as eugenics on steroids. In a section entitled with the Spanish Falangist battle cry ?Viva la muerte!? to symbolize the rampant anti-intellectualism overtaking Continental Europe?Spain being the initial battleground between the twin horrors of Bolshevism and Nazism?Salsburg (2001, p. 88) points out that Hitler?s racial policies decimated German universities, because many of the great European mathematicians were Jewish, of Jewish descent, or were married to Jews, and most of those with no Jewish connection were opposed to Nazi plans. The litany of great statisticians of the German school?including in this school, as Keynes did, not only Germans but other nationalities who wrote in German and were in habitual contact with the German scientific world?leaving Europe to take refuge primarily in the ?Anglo-Saxon? United States is quite impressive. One of these was Richard Von Mises, who laid the modern foundations of the frequency theory of probability. According to his collaborator and wife, Geiringer (1978), in 1933 Von Mises recognized that it would be ?both unwise and undignified? (p. 1229) to remain at the University of Berlin and accepted a position at the University of Istanbul. In 1939, as World War II approached, he felt that he had to leave Istanbul and accepted a position at Harvard University. The man certainly could calculate his probabilities. Two of the German school fleeing Europe were instrumental in the final formulation and understanding of the stochastic models underlying scientometric and information science distributions. One was George Po?lya, who pioneered contagious distributions. It was from Po?lya?s work that Neyman (1939, p. 36) took the term ?contagious.? Po?lya did his seminal work at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zu?rich, but in 1940 the political situation in Europe forced him to move to the United States, where he ultimately took up a position at Stanford. The other was William Feller, who was fired at the University of Kiel in 1933 because of his ?mixed descent.? Feller made it to the US in 1939, where he worked first at Brown, then at Cornell, and finally at Princeton, winning in 1969 the prestigious National Medal of Science for his work in mathematics and statistics. His textbook, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, became a standard that is still highly consulted today. Others of the German school finding refuges in the US were Emil Gumbel, Herman Hartley, and Abraham Wald. Gumbel was chased from the University of Heidelberg in 1932 by Nazi-led student groups, who thereby saved his life, fleeing first to France and then to New York, where he did his best work as an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Together with R. A. Fisher, he pioneered the mathematical field of extreme value theory. As for Hartley, in 1934 he emigrated first to England, where he became a close collaborator with Egon Pearson, Karl?s son, and then in 1953 to the US, working first at Iowa State, which Snedecor had made a center of British biometrics, and then at Texas A&M. Wald was forced to flee Austria in 1938 at the time of the Anschluss, joining in 1941the faculty of Columbia University, where he paid his tormentors back by doing statistical studies that enabled the US bomber crews to level German cities more safely because of the greater effectiveness of their armor protection. The arrival of such intellectual giants was instrumental in the rise of the United States to scientific preeminence. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugene.garfield at THOMSONREUTERS.COM Thu Oct 7 18:13:28 2010 From: eugene.garfield at THOMSONREUTERS.COM (Eugene Garfield) Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 17:13:28 -0500 Subject: Articles from Scientometrics November 2010 Message-ID: -----Original Message----- From: profiles at radirect.isinet.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: A new author's productivity index: p-index (Article, English) AUTHOR: Assimakis, N; Adam, M SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.415-427 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): PRICE DJD rauth; ZUCKERMAN HA rauth KEYWORDS: Metrics; Productivity; Author rank; Co-authorship KEYWORDS+: MULTIPLE AUTHORSHIP; CITATION MEASURES; PUBLICATION; COLLABORATION; COAUTHORS; CREDIT; SCIENTISTS; ARTICLES; PATTERNS; ORDER ABSTRACT: In this paper a new author's productivity index is introduced, namely the golden productivity index. The proposed index measures the productivity of an individual researcher evaluating the number of papers as well as the rank of co-authorship. It provides an efficient method to measure the author's contribution in articles writing, compared to other ordinary methods. It gives emphasis to the first authors contributions due to the fact that traditionally the rank of each author shows the magnitude of his contribution in the article. AUTHOR ADDRESS: N Assimakis, Technol Educ Inst Lamia, Dept Elect, Lamia, Greece [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00003) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: The iceberg hypothesis revisited (Article, English) AUTHOR: Lancho-Barrantes, BS; Guerrero-Bote, VP; Moya-Anegon, F SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.443-461 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): GARFIELD E rauth; MERTON RK SCIENCE 159:56 1968; PUDOVKIN AI J AM SOC INF SCI TEC 53:1113 2002 KEYWORDS: Knowledge export; Scientometrics; Journal impact factor; Citation analysis KEYWORDS+: JOURNAL IMPACT MEASURES; SCIENCE; PATHFINDER; CATEGORIES; FIELDS ABSTRACT: A study is described of the rank/JIF (Journal Impact Factor) distributions in the high-coverage Scopus database, using recent data and a three-year citation window. It includes a comparison with an older study of the Journal Citation Report categories and indicators, and a determination of the factors most influencing the distributions. While all the specific subject areas fit a negative logarithmic law fairly well, those with a greater External JIF have distributions with a more sharply defined peak and a longer tail-something like an iceberg. No S- shaped distributions, such as predicted by Egghe, were found. A strong correlation was observed between the knowledge export and import ratios. Finally, data from both Scopus and ISI were used to characterize the rank/JIF distributions by subject area. AUTHOR ADDRESS: VP Guerrero-Bote, Univ Extremadura, Fac Bibliotecon & Documentac, E-06071 Badajoz, Spain [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00005) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: Improvements in productivity based on co-authorship: a case study of published articles in China (Article, English) AUTHOR: Cho, CC; Hu, MW; Liu, MC SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.463-470 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): MORAVCSIK MJ rauth; PRICE DJD rauth; ZUCKERMAN HA rauth KEYWORDS: Co-authorship; Collaboration; Knowledge production function KEYWORDS+: REGIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS; SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION; ACADEMIC RESEARCH; ECONOMICS; DETERMINANTS; KNOWLEDGE; JOURNALS; SCIENCE ABSTRACT: The issue of primary interest to this study is the collaboration that has taken place in science and technology (S&T) research in China. Due to our empirical evidences, the regions with higher relationship (network) capital enjoy higher knowledge productivity in terms of published articles. Our purpose in this paper is to investigate the relationships that exist between regional published articles and co-authorship in China covering the period from 1998 to 2007 by using Stata to investigate the relation between the regional publications and co-authored published articles. As main findings, the greater the number of co-authored articles that a region has, the greater their success, in terms of the number of articles published. Indeed, both domestic and international co-authorship have had positive effects on published article levels in China. AUTHOR ADDRESS: CC Cho, Tamkang Univ, Grad Inst Ind Econ, Taipei 25137, Taiwan [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00006) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: Citation analysis and peer ranking of Australian social science journals (Article, English) AUTHOR: Haddow, G; Genoni, P SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.471-487 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): LINE MB rauth; PRICE DJD rauth; HIRSCH JE P NATL ACAD SCI USA 102:16569 2005; JOURNALS item_title; CITATION item_title; CITATION ANALYS* item_title; CITATION* item_title KEYWORDS: Citation analysis; Social science journals; Research Assessment; Citation sources; Australia; Journal ranking KEYWORDS+: WEB-OF-SCIENCE; RESEARCH ASSESSMENT EXERCISE; GOOGLE- SCHOLAR; H-INDEX; SCOPUS; COUNTS; IMPACT; INFORMATION; DIFFUSION; COVERAGE ABSTRACT: Citation analyses were performed for Australian social science journals to determine the differences between data drawn from Web of Science and Scopus. These data were compared with the tier rankings assigned by disciplinary groups to the journals for the purposes of a new research assessment model, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), due to be implemented in 2010. In addition, citation-based indicators including an extended journal impact factor, the h-index, and a modified journal diffusion factor, were calculated to assess whether subsequent analyses influence the ranking of journals. The findings suggest that the Scopus database provides higher number of citations for more of the journals. However, there appears to be very little association between the assigned tier ranking of journals and their rank derived from citations data. The implications for Australian social science researchers are discussed in relation to the use of citation analysis in the ERA. AUTHOR ADDRESS: G Haddow, Curtin Univ Technol, Dept Informat Studies, POB U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00007) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: The impact of the socio-economic crisis of 2001 on the scientific system of Argentina from the scientometric perspective (Article, English) AUTHOR: Miguel, S; Moya-Anegon, F; Herrero-Solana, V SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.495-507 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): SCIENTOMETRIC* item_title KEYWORDS: Scientific system; Scientometric indicators; Socio- economic crisis; 2001; Argentina KEYWORDS+: LATIN-AMERICA ABSTRACT: In recent years a number of studies have focused on Argentina's 2001 economic crisis and its political, social, and institutional repercussions. To date, however, no studies have analyzed its effects upon the country's scientific system from a scientometric perspective, in terms of resources dedicated to scientific activity and the final output and impact. The present study does so by means of a set of scientometric indicators that reflect economic effort, human resources dedicated to research, publications, collaborative relations, and the international visibility of scientific contributions. AUTHOR ADDRESS: S Miguel, Natl Univ La Plata, Lib Sci Dept, 48 E-6 & 7, RA-1900 La Plata, Argentina [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00009) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: Cardiovascular research in Spain. A comparative scientometric study (Article, English) AUTHOR: Bolanos-Pizarro, M; Thijs, B; Glanzel, W SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.509-526 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): SCIENTOMETRIC* item_title KEYWORDS: Cardiovascular research; Research performance; International collaboration; Spain KEYWORDS+: INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION; CO-AUTHORSHIP; BIBLIOMETRIC APPROACH; JOURNAL IMPACT; SCIENCE; INDICATORS; CITATIONS; OUTPUT ABSTRACT: A bibliometric analysis of Spanish cardiovascular research is presented. The study focuses on the productivity, visibility and citation impact in an international, notably European context. Special attention is given to international collaboration. The underlying bibliographic data are collected from Thomson Reuters's Web of Science on the basis of a 'hybrid' search strategy combining core journals, lexical terms and citation links especially developed for the field of cardiology. AUTHOR ADDRESS: W Glanzel, Katholieke Univ Leuven, Ctr R&D Monitoring ECOOM, Louvain, Belgium [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00010) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: Can applied science be 'good science'? Exploring the relationship between patent citations and citation impact in nanoscience (Article, English) AUTHOR: Meyer, M; Debackere, K; Glanzel, W SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.527-539 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): PRICE DJD rauth; CITATION item_title; CITATION* item_title KEYWORDS: Nanoscience; Nanotechnology; Patent citations; Citation impact; Science-technology linkage KEYWORDS+: SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE; EMERGING FIELD; NANO-SCIENCE; TECHNOLOGY; NANOTECHNOLOGY; INTERDISCIPLINARITY; COLLABORATION; EXPLORATION; PERFORMANCE; INNOVATION ABSTRACT: There is a rich literature on how science and technology are related to each other. Patent citation analysis is amongst the most frequently used to tool to track the strengths of links. In this paper we explore the relationship between patent citations and citation impact in nanoscience. Our observations indicate that patent-cited papers perform better in terms of standard bibliometric indicators than comparable publications that are not linked to technology in this way. More specifically, we found that articles cited in patents are more likely to be cited also by other papers. The share of highly cited papers is the most striking result. Instead of the average of 4% of all papers, 13.8% of the papers cited once or twice in patents fall into this category and even 23.5% of the papers more frequently cited in patents receive citation rates far above the standard. Our analyses further demonstrate the presence and the relevance of bandwagon effects driving the development of science and technology. AUTHOR ADDRESS: W Glanzel, Katholieke Univ Leuven, Ctr R&D Monitoring, Dekenstr 2, B-3000 Louvain, Belgium [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00011) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: The iCE approach for journal evaluation (Article, English) AUTHOR: Prathap, G SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.561-565 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): JOURNAL item_title; GARFIELD E JAMA-J AM MED ASSOC 295:90 2006; GARFIELD E rauth; HIRSCH JE P NATL ACAD SCI USA 102:16569 2005 KEYWORDS: Journal evaluation; Eigenfactor (TM); Article Influence (TM); Impact factor; p-index; h-index KEYWORDS+: IMPACT FACTOR; EIGENFACTOR ABSTRACT: Recent research has shown that simple graphical representations of research performance can be obtained using two- dimensional maps based on impact (i) and citations (C). The product of impact and citations leads to an energy term (E). Indeed, using E as the third coordinate, three-dimensional landscape maps can be prepared. In this paper, instead of using the traditional impact factor and total citations received for journal evaluation, Article Influence(TM) and Eigenfactor(TM) are used as substitutes. Article Influence becomes a measure of quality (i.e. a proxy for impact factor) and Eigenfactor is a proxy for size/quantity (like citations) and taken together, the product is an energy-like term. This can be used to measure the influence/prestige of a journal. It is also possible to propose a p- factor (where p = E (1/3)) as an alternative measure of the prestige or prominence of a journal which plays the equivalent role of the h-index. AUTHOR ADDRESS: G Prathap, Natl Inst Sci Commun & Informat Resources, New Delhi 110012, India [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00014) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: Deconstructing doctoral dissertations: how many papers does it take to make a PhD? (Article, English) AUTHOR: Hagen, NT SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.567-579 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): CRONIN B rauth KEYWORDS: Bibliometry; Bibliometric counting; Bias; Baseline; Benchmark KEYWORDS+: FACULTY-STUDENT COLLABORATIONS; AUTHORSHIP CREDIT; PUBLICATION; GRADUATE; ETHICS; THESES ABSTRACT: A collection of coauthored papers is the new norm for doctoral dissertations in the natural and biomedical sciences, yet there is no consensus on how to partition authorship credit between PhD candidates and their coauthors. Guidelines for PhD programs vary but tend to specify only a suggested range for the number of papers to be submitted for evaluation, sometimes supplemented with a requirement for the PhD candidate to be the principal author on the majority of submitted papers. Here I use harmonic counting to quantify the actual amount of authorship credit attributable to individual PhD graduates from two Scandinavian universities in 2008. Harmonic counting corrects for the inherent inflationary and equalizing biases of routine counting methods, thereby allowing the bibliometrically identifiable amount of authorship credit in approved dissertations to be analyzed with unprecedented accuracy. Unbiased partitioning of authorship credit between graduates and their coauthors provides a post hoc bibliometric measure of current PhD requirements, and sets a de facto baseline for the requisite scientific productivity of these contemporary PhD's at a median value of approximately 1.6 undivided papers per dissertation. Comparison with previous census data suggests that the baseline has shifted over the past two decades as a result of a decrease in the number of submitted papers per candidate and an increase in the number of coauthors per paper. A simple solution to this shifting baseline syndrome would be to benchmark the amount of unbiased authorship credit deemed necessary for successful completion of a specific PhD program, and then monitor for departures from this level over time. Harmonic partitioning of authorship credit also facilitates cross-disciplinary and inter-institutional analysis of the scientific output from different PhD programs. Juxtaposing bibliometric benchmarks with current baselines may thus assist the development of harmonized guidelines and transparent transnational quality assurance procedures for doctoral programs by providing a robust and meaningful standard for further exploration of the causes of intra- and inter-institutional variation in the amount of unbiased authorship credit per dissertation. AUTHOR ADDRESS: NT Hagen, Bodo Univ Coll, Fac Biosci & Aquaculture, Bodo, Norway [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00015) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: Counting the citations: a comparison of Web of Science and Google Scholar in the field of business and management (Article, English) AUTHOR: Mingers, J; Lipitakis, EAECG SOURCE: SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (2). NOV 2010. p.613-625 SPRINGER, DORDRECHT SEARCH TERM(S): HIRSCH JE P NATL ACAD SCI USA 102:16569 2005; CITATION* item_title KEYWORDS: Citations; Google Scholar; Research impact; Web of Science KEYWORDS+: H-INDEX; JOURNALS; SCOPUS; DATABASES; IMPACT ABSTRACT: Assessing the quality of the knowledge produced by business and management academics is increasingly being metricated. Moreover, emphasis is being placed on the impact of the research rather than simply where it is published. The main metric for impact is the number of citations a paper receives. Traditionally this data has come from the ISI Web of Science but research has shown that this has poor coverage in the social sciences. A newer and different source for citations is Google Scholar. In this paper we compare the two on a dataset of over 4,600 publications from three UK Business Schools. The results show that Web of Science is indeed poor in the area of management and that Google Scholar, whilst somewhat unreliable, has a much better coverage. The conclusion is that Web of Science should not be used for measuring research impact in management. AUTHOR ADDRESS: J Mingers, Univ Kent, Kent Business Sch, Canterbury CT7 2PE, Kent, England [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 652YJ 00018) ISSN: 0138-9130 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TITLE: The citation field of evolutionary economics (Article, English) AUTHOR: Dolfsma, W; Leydesdorff, L SOURCE: JOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY ECONOMICS 20 (5). OCT 2010. p.645-664 SPRINGER, NEW YORK SEARCH TERM(S): GARFIELD E rauth; MACROBERTS MH rauth; PRICE DJD rauth; HIRSCH JE P NATL ACAD SCI USA 102:16569 2005; MERTON RK SCIENCE 159:56 1968; CITATION item_title; CITATION* item_title; GARFIELD E SCIENCE 178:471 1972 KEYWORDS: Evolutionary economics; Citation analysis; Interdisciplinarity; Journal of Evolutionary Economics (JEE); Betweenness centrality KEYWORDS+: SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS; SCIENCE; CENTRALITY; NETWORK; INTERDISCIPLINARITY; IMPACT; GROWTH; INDEX; TERMS ABSTRACT: Evolutionary economics has developed into an academic field of its own, institutionalized around, amongst others, the Journal of Evolutionary Economics (JEE). This paper analyzes the way and extent to which evolutionary economics has become an interdisciplinary journal, as its aim was: a journal that is indispensable in the exchange of expert knowledge on topics and using approaches that relate naturally with it. Analyzing citation data for the relevant academic field for the Journal of Evolutionary Economics, we use insights from scientometrics and social network analysis to find that, indeed, the JEE is a central player in this interdisciplinary field aiming mostly at understanding technological and regional dynamics. It does not, however, link firmly with the natural sciences (including biology) nor to management sciences, entrepreneurship, and organization studies. Another journal that could be perceived to have evolutionary acumen, the Journal of Economic Issues, does relate to heterodox economics journals and is relatively more involved in discussing issues of firm and industry organization. The JEE seems most keen to develop theoretical insights. AUTHOR ADDRESS: W Dolfsma, Univ Groningen, Sch Business & Econ, POB 800, NL-9700 AV Groningen, Netherlands [ ]<-- Enter an X to order article (IDS: 654AY 00001) ISSN: 0936-9937 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- From kboyack at MAPOFSCIENCE.COM Tue Oct 12 12:41:05 2010 From: kboyack at MAPOFSCIENCE.COM (Kevin Boyack) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:41:05 -0600 Subject: Henry Small joins SciTech Strategies (mapofscience) Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, SciTech Strategies, Inc. is very pleased to welcome Henry Small to our research staff. Henry spent over 30 years working for the Institution for Scientific Information (later Thomson Scientific and Thomson Reuters), where he was Director of Research Services and Chief Scientist. He retired from Thomson Reuters last week. I'm sure you all are very aware of the great career Henry has had, and of the enormous influence his work has had on citation analysis, science mapping, and scientometrics in general. A brief bio can be found at http://www.mapofscience.com/wii.html. He has influenced generations of scientists and researchers in our field. Over the past few years, every time that Dick and I have started to work on something that seems "new" to us, we have found that Henry has already been there and has left a clear path for future research to follow. Henry's research interests have not changed. At SciTech he will continue to investigate co-citation contexts within the framework of science mapping, along with the other research questions that seem to so abundantly spring into his mind. Welcome aboard Henry! Henry can be reached by email at hsmall at mapofscience.com. Best regards, Kevin http://www.mapofscience.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Oct 12 16:29:29 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:29:29 -0400 Subject: Zhou, P; Leydesdorff, L. 2009. Chemistry in China - a bibliometric view. CHIMICA OGGI-CHEMISTRY TODAY 27 (6): 19-22 Message-ID: Zhou, P; Leydesdorff, L. 2009. Chemistry in China - a bibliometric view. CHIMICA OGGI-CHEMISTRY TODAY 27 (6): 19-22. Author Full Name(s): Zhou, Ping; Leydesdorff, Loet Language: English Document Type: Article KeyWords Plus: SCIENCE; KOREA Abstract: Based on bibliometric analysis, this paper explores China's publication activity in chemistry. China develops fast in chemical research and has taken a leading position in publishing journal papers. International collaboration plays a role in the Chinese chemical community, but this role varies among subfields. Addresses: [Zhou, Ping] Inst Sci & Tech Informat China, Beijing 100038, Peoples R China; [Zhou, Ping] Katholieke Univ Leuven, Ctr R&D Monitoring ECOOM, Fac FBE, Dept MSI, B-3000 Louvain, Belgium; [Leydesdorff, Loet] Univ Amsterdam, Amsterdam Sch Commun Res ASCoR, NL-1012 CX Amsterdam, Netherlands Reprint Address: Zhou, P, Inst Sci & Tech Informat China, 15 Fuxing Rd, Beijing 100038, Peoples R China. ISSN: 1973-8250 URL: http://chemistry-today.teknoscienze.com/pdf/zhouco6-09.pdf From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Oct 12 16:38:16 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:38:16 -0400 Subject: Minnerup, J; Wersching, H; Diederich, K; et al.2010. Methodological quality of preclinical stroke studies is not required for publication in high-impact journals. JOURNAL OF CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW AND METABOLISM 30 (9): 1619-1624 Message-ID: Minnerup, J; Wersching, H; Diederich, K; Schilling, M; Ringelstein, EB; Wellmann, J; Schabitz, WR. 2010. Methodological quality of preclinical stroke studies is not required for publication in high-impact journals. JOURNAL OF CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW AND METABOLISM 30 (9): 1619-1624. Author Full Name(s): Minnerup, Jens; Wersching, Heike; Diederich, Kai; Schilling, Matthias; Ringelstein, Erich Bernd; Wellmann, Juergen; Schaebitz, Wolf-Ruediger Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: impact factor; preclinical studies; stroke; study quality; translation KeyWords Plus: FOCAL CEREBRAL-ISCHEMIA; CLINICAL-TRIALS; ANIMAL- MODELS; METAANALYSIS; EFFICACY; BIAS; ANESTHESIA; RECOMMENDATIONS; ARTICLES; NXY-059 Abstract: Omitting quality characteristics in animal stroke studies leads to an overestimation of the efficacy of candidate stroke drugs. Nevertheless, the methodological quality of preclinical stroke studies is often limited. As publishing of research results in high-impact journals is an important motivation for scientists, we analyzed whether study quality predicts high-impact publishing. Animal stroke studies of neuroprotective drugs that were recently investigated in clinical phase II/III trials were included in the analysis. Data on the study quality and other important study characteristics were extracted. Regression analyses were performed to estimate the effect of the study characteristics on the journal's impact factor. We identified 117 studies that investigated 12 different drugs. Study quality was not associated with the impact factor before (beta = -0.2, P = 0.50) and after adjustment for other study characteristics (beta = -0.3, P = 0.19). There was a significant association of the number of investigated mechanisms and applied techniques with the impact factor (beta = 1.4, P < 0.0001). Our findings show that the quality of animal experimental stroke studies is not relevant for publishing in high-impact journals. The major predictor for accepting preclinical stroke studies in high-impact journals is the complexity of the investigation into a stroke drug's mode of action. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism (2010) 30, 1619-1624; doi:10.1038/jcbfm.2010.74; published online 2 June 2010 Addresses: [Minnerup, Jens] Univ Munster, Klin & Poliklin Neurol, Dept Neurol, D- 48149 Munster, Germany; [Wersching, Heike; Wellmann, Juergen] Univ Munster, Inst Epidemiol & Social Med, D-48149 Munster, Germany; [Schaebitz, Wolf- Ruediger] EVK Bielefeld, Dept Neurol, Bielefeld, Germany Reprint Address: Minnerup, J, Univ Munster, Klin & Poliklin Neurol, Dept Neurol, Albert Schweitzer Str 33, D-48149 Munster, Germany. E-mail Address: minnerup at uni-muenster.de ISSN: 0271-678X DOI: 10.1038/jcbfm.2010.74 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Oct 12 16:44:22 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:44:22 -0400 Subject: Sillanpaa, A; Koivula, T. 2010. Mapping Conflict Research: A Bibliometric Study of Contemporary Scientific Discourses. INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES 11 (2): 148-171 Message-ID: Sillanpaa, A; Koivula, T. 2010. Mapping Conflict Research: A Bibliometric Study of Contemporary Scientific Discourses. INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES 11 (2): 148-171. Author Full Name(s): Sillanpaa, Antti; Koivula, Tommi Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: conflict research; citation analysis; bibliometrics; scientific discourse KeyWords Plus: INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT; ECONOMIC INTERDEPENDENCE; COCITATION ANALYSIS; DOMESTIC CONFLICT; CITATION ANALYSIS; LIBERAL PEACE; CIVIL-WAR; DEMOCRACY; DISPUTES; TRADE Abstract: This paper employs bibliometric methods to map the structure of conflict research. Citation information is restructured by means of cluster and network analyses for the purpose of identifying the different discourses and fields contributing to conflict research. The data are derived from more than 1,300 articles published in 40 high-quality journals between 2000 and 2006. Four main discourses are identified within the field, and it is concluded that Democratic Peace Theory constitutes a powerful discursive core of contemporary conflict research, affecting most other discourses as well. It is suggested that instead of systemic foci, contemporary conflict research is dominated by the investigation of dyadic forms of interaction and that, somewhat surprisingly, the substantive focus of the most frequently cited research has remained on interstate war. The study intends to help researchers to be sensitive to gaps and focal points in contemporary research, and promote further discussion about the current state of the field. Applied approach provides academics, students, and practitioners with a usable and transparent procedure for structuring discourses and communicating about them further. ISSN: 1528-3577 URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528- 3585.2010.00399.x/abstract From gwhitney at UTK.EDU Tue Oct 12 19:28:54 2010 From: gwhitney at UTK.EDU (Gretchen Whitney) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:28:54 -0400 Subject: NFAIS Workshop on Emerging Metrics Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:06:03 -0400 From: Richard Hill To: asis-l at asis.org Subject: [Asis-l] NFAIS request [Posted by request: ASIS&T members can register at the Sister Society rate which is less than the non-member rate. Dick} NFAIS Workshop on Assessing the Usage and Value of Scholarly and Scientific Output: An Overview of Traditional and Emerging Metrics. Registration Discounts Available Through October 22nd.? The digital environment has not only transformed the definition of a ?publication,? but also has changed the ways in which researchers interact with and cite information.? As a result, new methods for measuring the usage and value of scholarly and scientific content, including large scientific data sets, are becoming increasingly important. Want to know more about these diverse metrics and how they complement the more traditional approaches? Join us on November 10, 2010 when experts from around the globe will gather in Philadelphia, PA for a one-day workshop organized by the NFAIS Committee on Usage Statistics. Both onsite and virtual registrations are available at a discount until October 22nd. The meeting will open with Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist, EBSCO Information Services, providing a look at what?s new with Project COUNTER and SUSHI.? He will be followed by Ross MacIntyre, Senior Manager, Mimas, University of Manchester, UK, who will describe a relatively new initiative, PIRUS 2, that takes COUNTER statistics down to the article level. Todd Carpenter, Executive Director, National Information Standards Organization (NISO), will provide an update on Project MESUR, and Dr. Robert D. Chen, Secretary-General, CODATA and Director, CIESIN, Columbia University and? Dr. Robert Downs, Senior Digital Archivist, CIESIN, Columbia University, will describe the challenges of? accessing, preserving, and citing large datasets. Dr. Jevin West, University of Washington, will open the afternoon session with a discussion of the Eigenfactor, an alternative/complement to the more widely-known journal impact factor.? He will be followed Ashlea Higgs, Elsevier, who will talk about a new indicator of journal citation impact, denoted as source normalized impact per paper (SNIP). Dr. Peter Binfield, Public Library of Science, will describe the article level metrics that are currently offered by PloS, and Jeff Dougherty, Thomson Reuters Healthcare & Science, will talk about the traditional and proven citation approach to measuring usage and value with a look at citation indexes, journal metrics and the impact factor. In closing, both a librarian, Joseph Zucca, Director of Planning and Communication, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, and a publisher, Jonathan Morgan, Assistant Director, Web Strategy and Innovation, American Chemical Society, will discuss the metrics that they use to measure value and usage and how they apply those metrics to key decisions within their organizations. The program, registration forms, directions to the meeting location, list of nearby hotels, and general information on Philadelphia are available at: http://nfais.brightegg.com/page/305-assessing-value-and-usage-of-scholarly-a nd-scientific-output. On-site Attendance: on or before October, 22, 2010, NFAIS members pay $385 and non-members pay $435 (registration fee includes continental breakfast, lunch, and all-day beverages).? After October 22nd, NFAIS members pay $435 and non-members pay $485.? Virtual Attendance: on or before October 22, 2010, NFAIS members pay $335 and non-members pay $385. After October 22nd, NFAIS members pay $385 and non-members pay $435.? Reduced virtual registrations are available for groups of 6 or more attendees (go to the registration site for more information:http://info.nfais.org/info/UsageNov10_RegVirtual.pdf. For more information contact:? Jill O?Neill, NFAIS Director, Communication and Planning, 215-893-1561 (phone); 215-893-1564 (fax); mailto:jilloneill at nfais.org or go to http://www.nfais.org/. NFAIS:? Supporting the Global Information Community ASIS&T 73rd Annual Meeting: Navigating Streams in an Information Ecosystem October 22-27, 2010, Pittsburgh, PA http://www.asis.org/asist2010/ ________________________________________ Asis-l mailing list Asis-l at asis.org http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/asis-l From eugene.garfield at THOMSONREUTERS.COM Wed Oct 13 14:41:21 2010 From: eugene.garfield at THOMSONREUTERS.COM (Eugene Garfield) Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:41:21 -0500 Subject: FW: Citations, Impact Indices and the Fabric of Science editorial by P. Balaram Message-ID: Our peripatetic friend Subbiah Arunachalam suggests you read the editorial by Prof. Balaram in the latest issue of Current Science at http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/10oct2010/857.pdf . "Citations, Impact Indices and the Fabric of Science" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 610-525-8729 Fax: 610-560-4749 Chairman Emeritus, ThomsonReuters Scientific (formerly ISI) 1500 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA 19130-4067 Editor Emeritus, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com 400 Market St. Suite 330 Philadelphia, PA 19106-2535 Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asist.org ________________________________ From: Subbiah Arunachalam [mailto:subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 9:10 PM To: P. Balaram Cc: Garfield, Eugene Subject: Fwd: Citations, Impact Indices and the Fabric of Science editorial by P. Balaram ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Date: Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 3:38 AM Subject: RE: Citations, Impact Indices and the Fabric of Science editorial by P. Balaram To: subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com Dear Arun: If you are in touch with Prof. Balaram please send him my best wishes and heart full thanks for his gracious editorial. If you can confirm that I have his latest email address I will be glad to write him myself as well. Gene pb at mbu.iisc.ernet.in ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 610-525-8729 Fax: 610-560-4749 Chairman Emeritus, ThomsonReuters Scientific (formerly ISI) 1500 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA 19130-4067 Editor Emeritus, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com 400 Market St. Suite 330 Philadelphia, PA 19106-2535 Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asist.org ________________________________ From: Subbiah Arunachalam [mailto:subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2010 5:07 AM To: Garfield, Eugene Subject: Citations, Impact Indices and the Fabric of Science Dear Gene: Please read the editorial by Prof. Balaram in the latest issue of Current Science at http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/10oct2010/857.pdf . "Citations, Impact Indices and the Fabric of Science" Regards. Arun -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Wed Oct 13 14:54:15 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:54:15 -0400 Subject: Lies, damned lies, and impact factors. Physics Today online editorial Message-ID: Lies, damned lies, and impact factors By Physics Today on October 11, 2010 2:31 PM In a commentary published four years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Eugene Garfield outlined the history of the journal impact factor. He and Irving Sher created the impact factor in the early 1960s to help determine which journals should be included in the then new Science Citation Index. Relying solely on the number of papers published in a journal, they feared, risked ignoring thin, highly selective journals, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In case you didn't know, a journal's impact factor for a given year is the average number of citations received by papers published in the journal during the two preceding years. Letters to the editor, editorials, book reviews, and other non- papers are excluded from the impact factor calculation. Fulltext: http://blogs.physicstoday.org/thedayside/2010/10/lies-damned-lies-and- impact-factors.html From loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET Thu Oct 14 02:59:22 2010 From: loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET (Loet Leydesdorff) Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:59:22 +0200 Subject: Problems of normalization for differences in citation behavior among fields of science Message-ID: Remaining problems with the "New Crown Indicator" (MNCS) of the CWTS available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.2379 In their article, entitled "Towards a new crown indicator: some theoretical considerations," Waltman et al. (2010; at arXiv:1003.2167 ) show that the "old crown indicator" of CWTS in Leiden was mathematically inconsistent and that one should move to the normalization as applied in the "new crown indicator." Although we now agree about the statistical normalization (Optof & Leydesdorff, 2010; Van Raan et al., 2010), the "new crown indicator" inherits the scientometric problems of the "old" one in treating subject categories as a standard for normalizing differences in citation behavior among fields of science. We propose fractional counting of the citations in the citing documents as an alternative normalization for differences in citation behavior among fields of science. We further note that the "mean" is not a proper statistics for measuring differences among skewed distributions. Without changing the acronym of "MNCS," one could define the "Median Normalized Citation Score." The median is by definition equal to the 50th percentile. The indicator can thus easily be extended with the 1% (= 99th percentile) most highly-cited papers. The seeming disadvantage of having to use non-parametric statistics is more than compensated by possible gains in the precision. Authors: Loet Leydesdorff , Tobias Opthof _____ How to evaluate universities in terms of their relative citation impacts: Fractional counting of citations and the normalization of differences among disciplines available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.2465 Fractional counting of citations can improve on ranking of multi-disciplinary research units (such as universities) by normalizing the differences among fields of science in terms of differences in citation behavior. Furthermore, normalization in terms of citing papers abolishes the unsolved questions in scientometrics about the delineation of fields of science in terms of journals and normalization when comparing among different journals. Using publication and citation data of seven Korean research universities, we demonstrate the advantages and the differences in the rankings, explain the possible statistics, and suggest ways to visualize the differences in (citing) audiences in terms of a network. Authors: Loet Leydesdorff , Jung C. Shin ** apologies for cross-postings _____ Loet Leydesdorff Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. Tel. +31-20-525 6598; fax: +31-842239111 loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ Visiting Professor 2007-2010, ISTIC, Beijing; Honorary Fellow 2007-2010, SPRU, University of Sussex Now available: The Knowledge-Based Economy: Modeled, Measured, Simulated, 385 pp.; US$ 18.95; The Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society ; The Challenge of Scientometrics -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amsciforum at GMAIL.COM Sat Oct 16 10:27:44 2010 From: amsciforum at GMAIL.COM (Stevan Harnad) Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 10:27:44 -0400 Subject: Even before OA Week has begun, response to Mandate Challenge is mounting Message-ID: ** Cross Posted ** (Please feel free to re-post to relevant academic mailing lists) The response to the OA Week OA Mandate Challenge is already quite remarkable, as you will see from Alma Swan's daily graphs: http://www.openoasis.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=615&catid=56 In the 6 days since the Challenge was posted (11 October), 7 new mandate adoptions and proposals have already been registered in ROARMAP: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ Apart from the time Finland registered its 26 mandates all in one day, this is already the largest burst of OA mandates since ROARMAP was launched (in 2003): http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/674-guid.html The 2010 OA Week OA Mandate Challenge can make a real, substantive, lasting contribution to accelerating the growth of OA. Not only will registering already-adopted mandates in ROARMAP help, but, perhaps even more, registering *proposed* mandates will help doubly: It will (1) reinforce the local institutional case for adoption of the proposal and (2) the example of the OA week adoptions and proposals will inspire many more proposal and adoptions globally. Adoptions cannot be generated within one open-access week, but proposals can be! Please use this week to try to generate a formal proposal at your institution, register it, and the momentum you start will continue building and broadening long after OA Week is over: To register an OA mandate adoption or proposal: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/sign.php#fr OA Week Mandate Challenge: http://www.openaccessweek.org/events/oa-mandate-adoption-challenge-1 From Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE Sat Oct 16 14:41:04 2010 From: Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE (Bornmann, Lutz) Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:41:04 +0200 Subject: New Papers Message-ID: Dear colleague: You might be interested in two new papers. Recently, Nature News reported on the first one (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/news.2010.539.html): 1) Bornmann, L. de Moya Aneg?n, F., & Leydesdorff, L. (2010). Do scientific advancements lean on the shoulders of giants? A bibliometric investigation of the Ortega hypothesis. PLoS ONE, 5(10), e13327: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013327 2) Bornmann, L. & Daniel, H.-D. (2010). Do author-suggested reviewers rate submissions more favorably than editor-suggested reviewers? A study on Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. PLoS ONE, 5(10): e13345: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013345 Kind regards, Lutz Bornmann --------------------------------------- New contact information! Dr. Dr. habil. Lutz Bornmann Max Planck Society Office of Research Analysis and Foresight Hofgartenstr. 8 80539 Munich Tel.: 089/2108-1265 Email: bornmann at gv.mpg.de ResearcherID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-3926-2008 Download of publications: www.lutz-bornmann.de From harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK Sat Oct 16 15:43:05 2010 From: harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK (Stevan Harnad) Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 15:43:05 -0400 Subject: OA Week Mandate Challenge URL Correction Message-ID: With apologies, the correct URL for the OA Mandate Challenge is http://www.openaccessweek.org/events/oa-mandate-adoption-challenge rather than XX http://www.openaccessweek.org/events/oa-mandate-adoption-challenge-1 because of a software error. Please use the first URL, without the -1 at the end, not the second, otherwise the software just takes you to an error page. Many thanks, Stevan From Nsmalheiser at PSYCH.UIC.EDU Sun Oct 17 12:58:47 2010 From: Nsmalheiser at PSYCH.UIC.EDU (Smalheiser, Neil) Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 11:58:47 -0500 Subject: New Papers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: As I read the "Ortega hypothesis" paper, I see a glaring issue. The authors do say "It is not yet clear (especially for the social sciences) whether citation impact is a good approximation of actual research impact and of the role of research in scientific advancements." Yet their confident interpretations and conclusions rest entirely on that assumption. Here is an alternative interpretation: Certain fields are "hot" and have a lot of people working in them very actively, at least for a while. The papers that deal with "hot topics" will garner a lot of interest and citations, and will cite each other. Even middling papers with good timing will be cited a lot. And this is without asking whether "hot topics" really have more long-term impact than other areas when viewed (say) 20 or 50 years later. Do we believe that the best work will deal with "hot topics"? At the very least, analyses of impact should not simply deal with entire disciplines, but should take into account the community structure of the field that cites the index paper. (My apologies if that has been dealt with by the authors in other venues.) Neil Smalheiser From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Bornmann, Lutz [Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE] Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2010 1:41 PM To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: [SIGMETRICS] New Papers Dear colleague: You might be interested in two new papers. Recently, Nature News reported on the first one (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/news.2010.539.html): 1) Bornmann, L. de Moya Aneg?n, F., & Leydesdorff, L. (2010). Do scientific advancements lean on the shoulders of giants? A bibliometric investigation of the Ortega hypothesis. PLoS ONE, 5(10), e13327: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013327 From Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE Sun Oct 17 13:52:47 2010 From: Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE (Bornmann, Lutz) Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:52:47 +0200 Subject: AW: [SIGMETRICS] New Papers Message-ID: Dear Neil, yes, there might be a hot topic effect. But I do not see how this explanation contracts our interpretations. I only see a problem with your statement that "even middling papers with good timing will be cited a lot". If a scientist has a good timing, identify a hot topic within a field very early and publish a contribution very fast, one can assume that this paper is not bad. The scientist must have a good knowledge on his/her field and good scientists do not write bad papers (as a general rule). However, we speculate. It would be worth to investigate that. Lutz ________________________________ Von: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics im Auftrag von Smalheiser, Neil Gesendet: So 17.10.2010 18:58 An: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Betreff: Re: [SIGMETRICS] New Papers As I read the "Ortega hypothesis" paper, I see a glaring issue. The authors do say "It is not yet clear (especially for the social sciences) whether citation impact is a good approximation of actual research impact and of the role of research in scientific advancements." Yet their confident interpretations and conclusions rest entirely on that assumption. Here is an alternative interpretation: Certain fields are "hot" and have a lot of people working in them very actively, at least for a while. The papers that deal with "hot topics" will garner a lot of interest and citations, and will cite each other. Even middling papers with good timing will be cited a lot. And this is without asking whether "hot topics" really have more long-term impact than other areas when viewed (say) 20 or 50 years later. Do we believe that the best work will deal with "hot topics"? At the very least, analyses of impact should not simply deal with entire disciplines, but should take into account the community structure of the field that cites the index paper. (My apologies if that has been dealt with by the authors in other venues.) Neil Smalheiser From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Bornmann, Lutz [Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE] Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2010 1:41 PM To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: [SIGMETRICS] New Papers Dear colleague: You might be interested in two new papers. Recently, Nature News reported on the first one (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/news.2010.539.html): 1) Bornmann, L. de Moya Aneg?n, F., & Leydesdorff, L. (2010). Do scientific advancements lean on the shoulders of giants? A bibliometric investigation of the Ortega hypothesis. PLoS ONE, 5(10), e13327: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013327 From loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET Sun Oct 17 13:58:43 2010 From: loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET (Loet Leydesdorff) Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:58:43 +0200 Subject: New Papers In-Reply-To: <40469184F1D86344A835AB980269681A2939E854EF@exchange.psych.uic.edu> Message-ID: Dear Neil and colleagues, Thank you for the alternative interpretation: Here is an alternative interpretation: Certain fields are "hot" and have a lot of people working in them very actively, at least for a while. The papers that deal with "hot topics" will garner a lot of interest and citations, and will cite each other. Isn?t this almost the definition of a research front? The two-year impact factor was invented (by Garfield) to grasp this short-term effect. Research fronts cannot be expected to operate in all sciences. In the social sciences, particularly, that is a doubtful assumption. Even middling papers with good timing will be cited a lot. And this is without asking whether "hot topics" really have more long-term impact than other areas when viewed (say) 20 or 50 years later. The mass of hot and highly-cited papers at research fronts will not necessarily make it to the top-1% because there are so many of them. (There may be a mechanism like preferential attachment at work.) Do we believe that the best work will deal with "hot topics"? At the very least, analyses of impact should not simply deal with entire disciplines, but should take into account the community structure of the field that cites the index paper. (My apologies if that has been dealt with by the authors in other venues.) Yes: source-normalization is now very much on the research agenda, isn?t it? Highly-citedness may have a number of causes; for example, the hotness of topics. As shown before, also standardizing methods (e.g., Lowry et al., 1951) may lead to high citation rates. Yet, the issue of this one paper was about a statistical relation between the highly citedness of citing and cited papers. The analysis was pursued at the document level: one could metaphorically say that there is an elite layer of papers. Those who carry in that elite structure participate in an additional communication layer. Neil Smalheiser Best wishes, Loet From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Bornmann, Lutz [Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE] Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2010 1:41 PM To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: [SIGMETRICS] New Papers http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html Dear colleague: You might be interested in two new papers. Recently, Nature News reported on the first one ( http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/news.2010.539.html): 1) Bornmann, L. de Moya Aneg?n, F., & Leydesdorff, L. (2010). Do scientific advancements lean on the shoulders of giants? A bibliometric investigation of the Ortega hypothesis. PLoS ONE, 5(10), e13327: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013327 < http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013327> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET Mon Oct 18 01:34:00 2010 From: loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET (Loet Leydesdorff) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 07:34:00 +0200 Subject: most highly-cited papers Message-ID: Dear Neil and colleagues, Thank you for the alternative interpretation: Here is an alternative interpretation: Certain fields are "hot" and have a lot of people working in them very actively, at least for a while. The papers that deal with "hot topics" will garner a lot of interest and citations, and will cite each other. Isn?t this almost the definition of a research front? The two-year impact factor was invented (by Garfield) to grasp this short-term effect. Research fronts cannot be expected to operate in all sciences. In the social sciences, particularly, that is a doubtful assumption. Even middling papers with good timing will be cited a lot. And this is without asking whether "hot topics" really have more long-term impact than other areas when viewed (say) 20 or 50 years later. The mass of hot and highly-cited papers at research fronts will not necessarily make it to the top-1% because there are so many of them. (There may be a mechanism like preferential attachment at work.) Do we believe that the best work will deal with "hot topics"? At the very least, analyses of impact should not simply deal with entire disciplines, but should take into account the community structure of the field that cites the index paper. (My apologies if that has been dealt with by the authors in other venues.) Yes: source-normalization is now very much on the research agenda, isn?t it? Highly-citedness may have a number of causes; for example, the hotness of topics. As shown before, also standardizing methods (e.g., Lowry et al., 1951) may lead to high citation rates. Yet, the issue of this one paper was about a statistical relation between the highly citedness of citing and cited papers. The analysis was pursued at the document level: one could metaphorically say that there is an elite layer of papers. Those who carry in that elite structure participate in an additional communication layer. Neil Smalheiser Best wishes, Loet From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Bornmann, Lutz [Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE] Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2010 1:41 PM To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: [SIGMETRICS] New Papers http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html Dear colleague: You might be interested in two new papers. Recently, Nature News reported on the first one ( http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/news.2010.539.html): 1) Bornmann, L. de Moya Aneg?n, F., & Leydesdorff, L. (2010). Do scientific advancements lean on the shoulders of giants? A bibliometric investigation of the Ortega hypothesis. PLoS ONE, 5(10), e13327: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013327 < http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013327> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ronald.rousseau at KHBO.BE Mon Oct 18 01:48:37 2010 From: ronald.rousseau at KHBO.BE (Ronald Rousseau) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 07:48:37 +0200 Subject: New Papers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Lutz, colleagues, About your other paper (author-suggested reviewers vs. editor-suggested ones). Whom would you like to read and review your paper? Of course, a colleague who is really interested in the topic you have studied. And of course she/he will give a more favourable appraisal than the average reviewer who might be less interested. So without any form of game playing, author-suggested reviewers will rate you higher than editor-chosen ones. Best regards, Ronald -- Ronald Rousseau President of the ISSI KHBO - Association K.U.Leuven Industrial Sciences and Technology Zeedijk 101 - 8400 Oostende, Belgium Professor associated to K.U.Leuven Guest Professor Antwerp University, IBW Honorary Professor Henan Normal University (Xinxiang, China) Adjunct professor of Shanghai University Guest Professor at the National Library of Sciences CAS (Beijing) Guest Professor at Dalian University of Technology Honorary researcher at Zhejiang University, Information Resources Management Institute E-mail: ronald.rousseau at khbo.be web page: http://users.telenet.be/ronald.rousseau Technical skill is mastery of complexity while creativity is mastery of simplicity (E.C. Zeeman) ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. From Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE Mon Oct 18 03:18:08 2010 From: Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE (Bornmann, Lutz) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:18:08 +0200 Subject: New Papers In-Reply-To: A<20101018074837.5ggu1byj17eso4ko@webmail.khbo.be> Message-ID: Dear Ronald, This could be one explanation for the better ratings of author-suggested reviewers. Another explanation is that the author-suggested reviewers are the authors' best friends. There is the danger that these reviewers rate a manuscript more favourably than they would rate it if it were submitted by unknown authors. I think the most important question here is: Is it fair that one group of reviewers rate manuscripts more favourably than another group - independently of the quality of the submitted manuscripts? Best, Lutz --------------------------------------- Dr. Dr. habil. Lutz Bornmann Max Planck Society Office of Research Analysis and Foresight Hofgartenstr. 8 80539 Munich Tel.: 089/2108-1265 Email: bornmann at gv.mpg.de ResearcherID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-3926-2008 >-----Original Message----- >From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics >[mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Ronald Rousseau >Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 7:49 AM >To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU >Subject: [SIGMETRICS] New Papers > >Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): >http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html > >Dear Lutz, colleagues, > >About your other paper (author-suggested reviewers vs. >editor-suggested ones). Whom would you like to read and review your >paper? Of course, a colleague who is really interested in the topic >you have studied. And of course she/he will give a more favourable >appraisal than the average reviewer who might be less interested. > >So without any form of game playing, author-suggested reviewers will >rate you higher than editor-chosen ones. > >Best regards, > >Ronald >-- >Ronald Rousseau >President of the ISSI >KHBO - Association K.U.Leuven >Industrial Sciences and Technology >Zeedijk 101 - 8400 Oostende, Belgium >Professor associated to K.U.Leuven >Guest Professor Antwerp University, IBW >Honorary Professor Henan Normal University (Xinxiang, China) >Adjunct professor of Shanghai University >Guest Professor at the National Library of Sciences CAS (Beijing) >Guest Professor at Dalian University of Technology >Honorary researcher at Zhejiang University, Information >Resources Management >Institute >E-mail: ronald.rousseau at khbo.be >web page: http://users.telenet.be/ronald.rousseau > >Technical skill is mastery of complexity >while creativity is mastery of simplicity (E.C. Zeeman) > >---------------------------------------------------------------- >This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. > From Nsmalheiser at PSYCH.UIC.EDU Mon Oct 18 11:22:07 2010 From: Nsmalheiser at PSYCH.UIC.EDU (Smalheiser, Neil) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:22:07 -0500 Subject: New Papers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I think the most important question here is: Is it fair that one group of reviewers rate manuscripts more favourably than another group - independently of the quality of the submitted manuscripts? Dear Lutz, In a court of law, that would be called a "leading question", because it assumes the answer. Who decides the quality of the submitted manuscripts? The reviewers, at least in this context (though ultimately it is the readers and the scientific community who decide). If there were an objective measure of quality, we could do without peer review entirely. This also assumes that authors tend to recommend their personal friends who have conflicts of interest and who are less qualified to give objective opinions than the ones chosen by editors. In my own experience as an editor, authors tend to recommend leaders in their field as potential reviewers, often the same people I would have chosen as reviewers; and the minority of authors who recommend outliers are quickly flagged and over-ridden. Moreover, there is also the hidden assumption that authors act to maximize the chances that their manuscripts will be accepted. I have to tell you that my latest research paper (on endogenous siRNAs in brain) is on a controversial subject, so I deliberately sent it to the most mainstream journal in the field where it would be scrutinized by the most skeptical molecular biologists -- rather than sending it to some neuroscience journal where it might be accepted more readily. Why? Because I know that molecular biologists won't believe something they read in a neuroscience journal; unless they have blessed it themselves, it does not exist. I did submit a list of 5 potential reviewers, who I knew were familiar with neuroscience -- whereas most of the journal's reviewers deal with yeast or C. elegans. This probably did help my paper win acceptance, because reviewers who are familiar with the specific topic are more likely to understand the novelty and innovation better than others. In terms of fairness, the answer to your question is a strong YES. If I submit a manuscript, and it has errors or embarrassing flaws, I would expect my friends to be especially alert and protective on my behalf! Conversely, I can give you many examples where leading journals have relied on certain prominent reviewers who have prevented publication of innovative articles and thereby have ruined careers [one cannot be funded if one cannot publish the findings] and slowed down entire research fields. These reviewers think that they are being objective and simply insisting on quality. The author-suggested reviewers is one of the few ways around this roadblock. Indeed, historically, one of the main reasons that new journals arise is because a certain type or line of research is not taken seriously by the established journals. Just this year, the ACM (computer science assn.) has established their own intl. conference and journal, because the existing society (AMIA) does not recognize or appreciate computer science-oriented submissions in their own conference or journal. I don't think AMIA has any higher quality standards than ACM. AMIA reviewers simply do not resonate with the types of questions and approaches that CS authors have -- yet I bet THEY feel that they are acting as quality gatekeepers. I think there is a larger question here, which is whether one can usefully analyze scientific behavior strictly from the outside, in a black-box input-output manner, without modeling the internal machinery. YES, I do support that perspective (and if my colleague Vetle Torvik is listening, this is similar to the data-mining analysis of collaboration networks that he is initiating). However, it is only one facet of an overall analysis that also has to understand the behavior of scientists in terms of their own stated practice and reasons. Neil Smalheiser From pmd8 at CORNELL.EDU Mon Oct 18 13:53:54 2010 From: pmd8 at CORNELL.EDU (Philip Davis) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:53:54 -0400 Subject: New Papers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bornmann, Would avoiding "enemies" (i.e. competitors) provide the same result as preferentially selecting "friends"? Many journals allow authors to list preferential reviewers as well as those they would rather avoid evaluating their work. --Phil Davis Bornmann, Lutz wrote: > Dear Ronald, > > This could be one explanation for the better ratings of author-suggested > reviewers. Another explanation is that the author-suggested reviewers are the > authors' best friends. There is the danger that these reviewers rate a > manuscript more favourably than they would rate it if it were submitted by > unknown authors. > > I think the most important question here is: Is it fair that one group of > reviewers rate manuscripts more favourably than another group - independently > of the quality of the submitted manuscripts? > > -- Philip M. Davis, Ph.D. 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 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/author/pmd8/ From Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE Mon Oct 18 14:25:03 2010 From: Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE (Bornmann, Lutz) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:25:03 +0200 Subject: AW: [SIGMETRICS] New Papers Message-ID: Dear Neil,