From Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE Mon Sep 6 04:44:20 2010 From: Lutz.Bornmann at GV.MPG.DE (Bornmann, Lutz) Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2010 10:44:20 +0200 Subject: Mapping of excellence Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I am looking for activities, projects, publications etc. in the area of mapping of excellence in science. These activities etc. should be as more recent as possible. One example is the project "Mapping Excellence in Science and Technology across Europe in Life Sciences" of the CWTS and the Fraunhofer ISI from 2003. Thanking you in advance for your support, Lutz --------------------------------------- Dr. habil. Lutz Bornmann Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Forschungsanalyse und -vorausschau Hofgartenstr. 8 80539 M?nchen Tel.: 089/2108-1265 Email: bornmann at gv.mpg.de From jonathan.adams at THOMSONREUTERS.COM Tue Sep 7 04:34:28 2010 From: jonathan.adams at THOMSONREUTERS.COM (jonathan.adams at THOMSONREUTERS.COM) Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 09:34:28 +0100 Subject: FW: Post of Bibliometric Partner Consultant Message-ID: Dear Colleague Evidence, a business of Thomson Reuters based in Leeds in the UK, specialises in data analysis and consultancy focusing on the international research base. We are seeking to recruit a consultant to work with our Bibliometric Partners, in Europe and elsewhere. This is a complex role with wide-ranging and varied responsibilities. The post is sales-orientated but a key role for the successful applicant will be to work with our bibliometric partners to help them develop their business, so a significant background knowledge in research policy, management or evaluation will be important. We are keen to recruit a consultant who has significant experience related to the business of research, in either an academic or commercial environment. To reflect the networking role, our intention is that their first language would not necessarily be English but they must have a strong competency in two or more European languages. The salary reflects the challenges of the post. Please see the attached announcement for further details and how to apply. Sincerely Jonathan Adams Director, Research Evaluation Evidence, a Thomson Reuters business Healthcare & Science Phone: +44 (0) 113 384 5680 Fax: +44 (0) 113 384 5874 e/ jonathan.adams at thomsonreuters.com w/ www.evidence.co.uk For more information on Building a world-class university: A Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters conference , visit: www.timeshighereducation/worldclass Thomson Reuters (Scientific) Ltd is a company incorporated under the laws of England and Wales (registered number 756619) having its registered office and address for service at Aldgate House, 33 Aldgate High Street, London, EC3N 1DL This email is for the sole use of the intended recipient and contains information that may be privileged and/or confidential. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender by return email and delete this email and any attachments. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Post of Bibliometric Partner Consultant.pdf Type: application/octet-stream Size: 269925 bytes Desc: Post of Bibliometric Partner Consultant.pdf URL: From jonathan.adams at THOMSONREUTERS.COM Tue Sep 7 05:43:03 2010 From: jonathan.adams at THOMSONREUTERS.COM (jonathan.adams at THOMSONREUTERS.COM) Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 10:43:03 +0100 Subject: Post of Bibliometric Partner Consultant In-Reply-To: <01BE7A2C73B13A49945726DC089E9CDE06FCAAA0@tshuklonmbx01.ERF.THOMSON.COM> Message-ID: With apologies, I am reposting the message sent earlier with a correct closing date (17 September) on this vacancy. Dear Colleague Evidence, a business of Thomson Reuters based in Leeds in the UK, specialises in data analysis and consultancy focusing on the international research base. We are seeking to recruit a consultant to work with our Bibliometric Partners, in Europe and elsewhere. This is a complex role with wide-ranging and varied responsibilities. The post is sales-orientated but a key role for the successful applicant will be to work with our bibliometric partners to help them develop their business, so a significant background knowledge in research policy, management or evaluation will be important. We are keen to recruit a consultant who has significant experience related to the business of research, in either an academic or commercial environment. To reflect the networking role, our intention is that their first language would not necessarily be English but they must have a strong competency in two or more European languages. The salary reflects the challenges of the post. Please see the attached announcement for further details and how to apply. Sincerely Jonathan Adams Director, Research Evaluation Evidence, a Thomson Reuters business Healthcare & Science Phone: +44 (0) 113 384 5680 Fax: +44 (0) 113 384 5874 e/ jonathan.adams at thomsonreuters.com w/ www.evidence.co.uk For more information on Building a world-class university: A Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters conference , visit: www.timeshighereducation/worldclass Thomson Reuters (Scientific) Ltd is a company incorporated under the laws of England and Wales (registered number 756619) having its registered office and address for service at Aldgate House, 33 Aldgate High Street, London, EC3N 1DL This email is for the sole use of the intended recipient and contains information that may be privileged and/or confidential. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender by return email and delete this email and any attachments. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Evidence - Bibliometric Partner Consultant.pdf Type: application/octet-stream Size: 772417 bytes Desc: Evidence - Bibliometric Partner Consultant.pdf URL: From loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET Wed Sep 8 02:30:56 2010 From: loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET (Loet Leydesdorff) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 08:30:56 +0200 Subject: pre-conference in Leiden, September 8, 2010 Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Later today, a number of us will meet at Leiden for the pre-conference celebrating the 65th anniversary of Tony van Raan. For this occasion I animated Tony's oeuvre at http://www.leydesdorff.net/vanraan/animation . Happy birthday, and let's have a nice conference! (http://www.socialsciences.leiden.edu/cwts/sti-conference2010/ ) Best wishes, Loet _____ 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/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Mon Sep 13 16:43:16 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:43:16 -0400 Subject: Potter, J. 2010. Mapping the literature of occupational therapy: an update. JOURNAL OF THE MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 98 (3): 235-242 Message-ID: Potter, J. 2010. Mapping the literature of occupational therapy: an update. JOURNAL OF THE MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 98 (3): 235-242. Author Full Name(s): Potter, Jonathan Language: English Document Type: Article Abstract: Objectives: This study updated Reed's 1999 "Mapping the Literature of Occupational Therapy.'' An analysis of citation patterns and indexing coverage was undertaken to identify the core literature of occupational therapy and to determine access to that literature. Methods: Citations from three source journals for the years 2006 through 2008 were studied following the common methodology of the "Mapping the Literature of Allied Health Project.'' Bradford's Law of Scattering was applied to analyze the productivity of cited journals. A comparative analysis of indexing was conducted across three bibliographic databases. Results: A total of 364 articles cited 10,425 references. Journals were the most frequently cited format, accounting for 65.3% of the references, an increase of 4.1% over the 1999 study. Approximately one-third of the journal references cited a cluster of 9 journals, with the American Journal of Occupational Therapy dominating the field. An additional 120 journals were identified as moderately important based on times cited. CINAHL provided the most comprehensive indexing of core journals, while MEDLINE provided the best overall coverage. Conclusions: Occupational therapy is a multidisciplinary field with a strong core identity and an increasingly diverse literature. Indexing has improved overall since 1999, but gaps in the coverage are still evident. Addresses: [Potter, Jonathan] Eastern Washington Univ, Riverpoint Campus Lib, Spokane, WA 99210 USA Reprint Address: Potter, J, Eastern Washington Univ, Riverpoint Campus Lib, POB 1495, Spokane, WA 99210 USA. E-mail Address: jpotter at ewu.edu ISSN: 1536-5050 DOI: 10.3163/1536-5050.98.3.012 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Mon Sep 13 16:49:16 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:49:16 -0400 Subject: Frize, M. IEEE. 2009. Investigation into the Past and Future of Women in Science and Engineering. Message-ID: Frize, M. IEEE. 2009. Investigation into the Past and Future of Women in Science and Engineering. EMBC: 2009 ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY, VOLS 1-20: 1079- 1082. presented at Annual International Conference of the IEEE-Engineering-in- Medicine-and-Biology-Society in Minneapolis, MN, SEP 03-06, 2009. Author Full Name(s): Frize, M. Language: English Document Type: Proceedings Paper Abstract: Covering the Ancient Greek era, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the 19(th) and 20th C., this paper explores the visions of the abilities of women, their access to education, and their roles in these epochs. Recent data on the participation rate of women in science and engineering, the culture in these fields, and strategies to increase their presence are discussed. The paper ends with a discussion on how science and engineering could benefit from integrating and valuing a blend of masculine and feminine perspectives. Biomedical engineering as a field frequently chosen by women is mentioned. Addresses: Carleton Univ, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada Reprint Address: Frize, M, Carleton Univ, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada. E-mail Address: mfrize at connect.carleton.ca ISBN: 978-1-4244-3295-0 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Mon Sep 13 16:56:24 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:56:24 -0400 Subject: Meneghini, R; Packer, AL. 2010. THE EXTENT OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY AUTHORSHIP OF ARTICLES ON SCIENTOMETRICS AND BIBLIOMETRICS IN BRAZIL. INTERCIENCIA 35 (7): 510-514 Message-ID: Meneghini, R; Packer, AL. 2010. THE EXTENT OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY AUTHORSHIP OF ARTICLES ON SCIENTOMETRICS AND BIBLIOMETRICS IN BRAZIL. INTERCIENCIA 35 (7): 510-514. Author Full Name(s): Meneghini, Rogerio; Packer, Abel L. Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: Bibliometrics; Citation; H Index; Infometrics; Information Science; SciELO; Scientometrics; Web of Science KeyWords Plus: SCIENCE; PUBLICATION Abstract: The publications in scientometrics and bibliometrics with Brazilian authorship expanded exponentially in the 1990-2006 period, reaching 13 times in the Web of Science database and 19.5 times in the Google Scholar database. This increase is rather superior to that of the total Brazilian scientific production in the same time period (5.6 times in the Web of Science). Some characteristics to be noticed in this rise are: 1) The total number of articles during this period was 197; in that, 78% were published in 57 Brazilian journals and 22% in 13 international journals. 2) The national and international articles averaged 4.3 and 5.9 citations/article, respectively; two journals stood out among these, the national Ciencia da Informacao (44 articles averaging 6.7 citations/article) and the international Scientometrics (32 articles averaging 6.2 citations/article). 3) The articles encompass an impressive participation of authors from areas other than information science; only one-fourth of the authors are bound to the information science field, the remaining ones being distributed among the areas of humanities/business administration, biology/biomedicine, health and hard sciences. The occurrence of adventitious authors at this level of multidisciplinarity is uncommon in science. However, the possible benefits of such patterns are not clear in view of a fragmented intercommunication among the authors, as noticed through the citations. The advantages of changing this trend and of using other scientometric and bibliometric databases, such as SciELO, to avoid an almost exclusive use of the Web of Science database, are discussed. Addresses: [Meneghini, Rogerio] Univ Sao Paulo, BR-05508 Sao Paulo, Brazil; [Meneghini, Rogerio; Packer, Abel L.] Univ Fed Sao Paulo, SciELO Fundacao Apoio, Sao Paulo, Brazil; [Meneghini, Rogerio] Univ Fed Sao Paulo, Dept Hlth Informat, Sao Paulo, Brazil; [Packer, Abel L.] Syracuse Univ, Syracuse, NY 13244 USA Reprint Address: Meneghini, R, Univ Sao Paulo, BR-05508 Sao Paulo, Brazil. E-mail Address: rogerio.meneghini at scielo.org; packer at gmail.com ISSN: 0378-1844 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Mon Sep 13 16:59:33 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:59:33 -0400 Subject: Di Stefano, G; Peteraf, M; Verona, G. 2010. Dynamic capabilities deconstructed: a bibliographic investigation into the origins, development, and future directions of the research domain. INDUSTRIAL AND CORPORATE CHANGE 19 (4): 1187-1204 Message-ID: Di Stefano, G; Peteraf, M; Verona, G. 2010. Dynamic capabilities deconstructed: a bibliographic investigation into the origins, development, and future directions of the research domain. INDUSTRIAL AND CORPORATE CHANGE 19 (4): 1187-1204. Author Full Name(s): Di Stefano, Giada; Peteraf, Margaret; Verona, Gianmario Language: English Document Type: Article KeyWords Plus: RESOURCE-BASED VIEW; GUEST EDITORS INTRODUCTION; STRATEGIC-MANAGEMENT; INTELLECTUAL STRUCTURE; MULTINATIONAL- ENTERPRISES; INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE; AUTHOR COCITATION; CITATION ANALYSIS; FIRM PERFORMANCE; SPECIAL-ISSUE Abstract: This article uses co-citation analysis to explore the structure of the Dynamic Capabilities research domain, to better understand its origins, current state of development, and future directions. Co-citation analysis reveals the field's 'invisible colleges' and research directions. We find evidence of commonalities as well as polarizing differences among understandings across this research domain, suggesting opportunities and challenges for future research. Addresses: [Di Stefano, Giada; Verona, Gianmario] Bocconi Univ, I-20136 Milan, Italy; [Peteraf, Margaret] Tuck Sch Business Dartmouth, Hanover, NH 03755 USA Reprint Address: Di Stefano, G, Bocconi Univ, Via Roentgen 1, I-20136 Milan, Italy. E-mail Address: giada.distefano at unibocconi.it; margaret.a.peteraf at tuck.dartmouth.edu; gianmario.verona at unibocconi.it ISSN: 0960-6491 DOI: 10.1093/icc/dtq027 Fulltext: http://icc.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/4/1187.full From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Mon Sep 13 17:01:38 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:01:38 -0400 Subject: Romme, AGL; Zollo, M; Berends, P. 2010. Dynamic capabilities, deliberate learning and environmental dynamism: a simulation model. INDUSTRIAL AND CORPORATE CHANGE 19 (4): 1271-1299 Message-ID: Romme, AGL; Zollo, M; Berends, P. 2010. Dynamic capabilities, deliberate learning and environmental dynamism: a simulation model. INDUSTRIAL AND CORPORATE CHANGE 19 (4): 1271-1299. Author Full Name(s): Romme, A. Georges L.; Zollo, Maurizio; Berends, Peter Language: English Document Type: Article KeyWords Plus: KNOWLEDGE; EMBEDDEDNESS; ACCUMULATION; PERFORMANCE; PARADOX; FIRMS Abstract: This article presents a simulation model of the development of knowledge, operating routines and dynamic capability in organizations at varying levels of environmental dynamism. We draw on system dynamics modeling to explore trade-offs and ambiguities in the decision to invest in deliberate learning processes to enhance the development of dynamic capabilities. The model incorporates mindfulness and tool utility (positive) effects as well as experience and inertia (negative) effects on dynamic capability. The simulation experiments conducted with the model suggest that the impact of deliberate learning on dynamic capability is non-linear, complex, and in some instances counter-intuitive. This is evident from the thresholds (tipping points) that arise from the differential effects of articulated knowledge, codified knowledge and operating routines on dynamic capability at different levels of environmental dynamism. Addresses: [Romme, A. Georges L.] Eindhoven Univ Technol, Sch Ind Engn, NL- 5600 MB Eindhoven, Netherlands; [Zollo, Maurizio] Bocconi Univ, Dept Management, I-20136 Milan, Italy; [Berends, Peter] Maastricht Univ, Sch Business & Econ, NL-6200 MD Maastricht, Netherlands Reprint Address: Romme, AGL, Eindhoven Univ Technol, Sch Ind Engn, POB 513, NL-5600 MB Eindhoven, Netherlands. E-mail Address: a.g.l.romme at tue.nl; maurizio.zollo at unibocconi.it; p.berends at os.unimaas.nl ISSN: 0960-6491 DOI: 10.1093/icc/dtq031 Fulltext: http://icc.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/4/1271.full From lietz at FORSCHUNGSINFO.DE Wed Sep 15 13:29:25 2010 From: lietz at FORSCHUNGSINFO.DE (Lietz, Haiko) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:29:25 +0200 Subject: 2 Positions in Bibliometrics Message-ID: Dear all, The German Competence Center for Bibliometrics is seeking to appoint Two Scientific Assistants (full time, 2 years fixed term, 13/14 TV?D) "We are looking for highly motivated individuals with a university degree, a good knowledge of mathematical and statistical methods as well as relational database systems and a good command of SQL. The main task will be conducting bibliometric analyses and advancement and validation of respective methods and techniques. Therefore skills in bibliometrics and experience in scientific project work are welcome. Excellent communication and organizational skills, the capacity for teamwork, good language skills in German and/or English are required. We offer the opportunity to join a highly committed and motivated team, diversified tasks and exciting and promising topics. Employment, compensation and social benefits all conform to the German labour agreement for the public service sector (TV?D 13/14 depending on your qualification). Compliance with the directives for severely handicapped persons and part-time employment regulations is guaranteed. Interested candidates will have the opportunity to pursue a PhD. Currently the iFQ is located in Bonn, it will move to Berlin in 2011 or at the beginning of 2012. Please send your application (including CV, copies of certificates) to the Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance, Prof. Dr. Stefan Hornbostel, Godesberger Allee 90, D-53175 Bonn, Germany or to glaab at forschungsinfo.de. The closing date for applications is 30 September 2010." This job offer is also available as a PDF: http://www.research-information.de/ausschreibungen/Bibliometrie_job_offer_08-2010_engl.pdf Please feel free to forward this message. Sorry for cross-posting. Best wishes Haiko Lietz Institut f?r Forschungsinformation und Qualit?tssicherung Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance www.forschungsinfo.de Kompetenzzentrum Bibliometrie Competence Centre for Bibliometrics www.bibliometrie.info Godesberger Allee 90 53175 Bonn Germany Tel. +49 (0)228-97273~21 Fax +49 (0)228-97273~49 Email: lietz at forschungsinfo.de -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Hakan.Carlsson at UB.GU.SE Wed Sep 15 14:38:49 2010 From: Hakan.Carlsson at UB.GU.SE (=?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E5kan_Carlsson?=) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:38:49 +0200 Subject: Position Open as University Bibliometrician Message-ID: Gothenburg University Library in Gothenburg, Sweden, is proudly announcing an open position as University Bibliometrician. For more information, please contact H?kan Carlsson, Hakan.Carlsson at ub.gu.se, or Agneta Olsson, Agneta.Olsson at ub.gu.se. Last day for application is September 24. For information in Swedish: http://www.ub.gu.se/info/ledigt/AnnonsBibliometrikerht10.pdf ------------------------------------------ H?kan Carlsson Bibliometrician GOTHENBURG UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Bibliometric Services Visting address: Renstr?msgatan 4 PO Box 222, SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden Phone +46 31 786 5135 Fax +46 31 786 1755 Mobile +46 70 981 7883 www.ub.gu.se -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Sep 21 13:16:11 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:16:11 -0400 Subject: Elkins, MR; Maher, CG; Herbert, RD; Moseley, AM; Sherrington, C. 2010. Correlation between the Journal Impact Factor and three other journal citation indices. SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (1): 81-93 Message-ID: Elkins, MR; Maher, CG; Herbert, RD; Moseley, AM; Sherrington, C. 2010. Correlation between the Journal Impact Factor and three other journal citation indices. SCIENTOMETRICS 85 (1): 81-93. Author Full Name(s): Elkins, Mark R.; Maher, Christopher G.; Herbert, Robert D.; Moseley, Anne M.; Sherrington, Catherine Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Citation analysis; Impact factor KeyWords Plus: SCIENCE; NONSENSE; SENSE; TOOL Abstract: To determine the degree of correlation among journal citation indices that reflect the average number of citations per article, the most recent journal ratings were downloaded from the websites publishing four journal citation indices: the Institute of Scientific Information's journal impact factor index, Eigenfactor's article influence index, SCImago's journal rank index and Scopus' trend line index. Correlations were determined for each pair of indices, using ratings from all journals that could be identified as having been rated on both indices. Correlations between the six possible pairings of the four indices were tested with Spearman's rho. Within each of the six possible pairings, the prevalence of identifiable errors was examined in a random selection of 10 journals and among the 10 most discordantly ranked journals on the two indices. The number of journals that could be matched within each pair of indices ranged from 1,857 to 6,508. Paired ratings for all journals showed strong to very strong correlations, with Spearman's rho values ranging from 0.61 to 0.89, all p < 0.001. Identifiable errors were more common among scores for journals that had very discordant ranks on a pair of indices. These four journal citation indices were significantly correlated, providing evidence of convergent validity (i.e. they reflect the same underlying construct of average citability per article in a journal). Discordance in the ranking of a journal on two indices was in some cases due to an error in one index. Addresses: [Elkins, Mark R.] Royal Prince Alfred Hosp, Dept Resp Med, Camperdown, NSW 2050, Australia; [Maher, Christopher G.; Herbert, Robert D.; Moseley, Anne M.; Sherrington, Catherine] Univ Sydney, George Inst Int Hlth, Sydney, NSW 2050, Australia Reprint Address: Elkins, MR, Royal Prince Alfred Hosp, Dept Resp Med, Missenden Rd, Camperdown, NSW 2050, Australia. E-mail Address: elkinsm at med.usyd.edu.au ISSN: 0138-9130 DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0262-0 Fulltext: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p24251g0l54r3w24/ From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Sep 21 13:20:16 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:20:16 -0400 Subject: Beirlant, J; Einmahl, JHJ. 2010. Asymptotics for the Hirsch Index. SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF STATISTICS 37 (3): 355-364 Message-ID: Beirlant, J; Einmahl, JHJ. 2010. Asymptotics for the Hirsch Index. SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF STATISTICS 37 (3): 355-364.. Author Full Name(s): Beirlant, Jan; Einmahl, John H. J. Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: asymptotic normality; citation counts; extreme value theory; Hirsch index; research output; tail empirical process KeyWords Plus: WEIBULL TAIL-COEFFICIENT Abstract: The last decade methods for quantifying the research output of individual researchers have become quite popular in academic policy making. The h-index (or Hirsch index) constitutes an interesting combined bibliometric volume/impact indicator that has attracted a lot of attention recently. It is now a common indicator, available for instance on the Web of Science. In this article, we establish the asymptotic normality of the empirical h-index. The rate of convergence is non-standard: root h/(1 + nf(h)), where f is the density of the citation distribution and n is the number of publications of a researcher. In case that the citations follow a Pareto-type respectively a Weibull-type distribution as defined in extreme value theory, our general result specializes well to results that are useful for practical purposes such as the construction of confidence intervals and pairwise comparisons for the h-index. A simulation study for the Pareto-type case shows that the asymptotic theory works well for moderate sample sizes already. Addresses: [Einmahl, John H. J.] Tilburg Univ, Dept Econometr & Operat Res & Ctr, NL-5000 LE Tilburg, Netherlands; [Beirlant, Jan] Katholieke Univ Leuven, Louvain, Belgium Reprint Address: Einmahl, JHJ, Tilburg Univ, Dept Econometr & Operat Res & Ctr, POB 90153, NL-5000 LE Tilburg, Netherlands. E-mail Address: j.h.j.einmahl at uvt.nl ISSN: 0303-6898 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9469.2010.00694.x fulltext: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467- 9469.2010.00694.x/abstract From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Sep 21 13:23:54 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:23:54 -0400 Subject: Ruths, D; Al Zamal, F. 2010. A Method for the Automated, Reliable Retrieval of Publication-Citation Records. PLOS ONE 5 (8): art. no.-e12133 Message-ID: Ruths, D; Al Zamal, F. 2010. A Method for the Automated, Reliable Retrieval of Publication-Citation Records. PLOS ONE 5 (8): art. no.-e12133.. Author Full Name(s): Ruths, Derek; Al Zamal, Faiyaz Language: English Document Type: Article KeyWords Plus: INDEX Abstract: Background: Publication records and citation indices often are used to evaluate academic performance. For this reason, obtaining or computing them accurately is important. This can be difficult, largely due to a lack of complete knowledge of an individual's publication list and/or lack of time available to manually obtain or construct the publication-citation record. While online publication search engines have somewhat addressed these problems, using raw search results can yield inaccurate estimates of publication-citation records and citation indices. Methodology: In this paper, we present a new, automated method that produces estimates of an individual's publication-citation record from an individual's name and a set of domain-specific vocabulary that may occur in the individual's publication titles. Because this vocabulary can be harvested directly from a research web page or online (partial) publication list, our method delivers an easy way to obtain estimates of a publication-citation record and the relevant citation indices. Our method works by applying a series of stringent name and content filters to the raw publication search results returned by an online publication search engine. In this paper, our method is run using Google Scholar, but the underlying filters can be easily applied to any existing publication search engine. When compared against a manually constructed data set of individuals and their publication-citation records, our method provides significant improvements over raw search results. The estimated publication- citation records returned by our method have an average sensitivity of 98% and specificity of 72% (in contrast to raw search result specificity of less than 10%). When citation indices are computed using these records, the estimated indices are within 10% of the true value, compared to raw search results which have overestimates of, on average, 75%. Conclusions: These results confirm that our method provides significantly improved estimates over raw search results, and these can either be used directly for large-scale (departmental or university) analysis or further refined manually to quickly give accurate publication-citation records. Addresses: [Ruths, Derek; Al Zamal, Faiyaz] McGill Univ, Dept Comp Sci, Montreal, PQ, Canada Reprint Address: Ruths, D, McGill Univ, Dept Comp Sci, Montreal, PQ, Canada. E-mail Address: druths at ruthsresearch.org ISSN: 1932-6203 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012133 fulltext: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0012133 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Sep 21 13:29:21 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:29:21 -0400 Subject: Vioque, J; Ramos, JM; Navarrete-Munoz, EM; Garcia-de-la-Hera, M. 2010. A bibliometric study of scientific literature on obesity research in PubMed (1988-2007). OBESITY REVIEWS 11 (8): 603-611 Message-ID: Vioque, J; Ramos, JM; Navarrete-Munoz, EM; Garcia-de-la-Hera, M. 2010. A bibliometric study of scientific literature on obesity research in PubMed (1988- 2007). OBESITY REVIEWS 11 (8): 603-611.. Author Full Name(s): Vioque, J.; Ramos, J. M.; Navarrete-Munoz, E. M.; Garcia- de-la-Hera, M. Language: English Document Type: Review Author Keywords: Bibliometry; literature review; obesity; research KeyWords Plus: DEVELOPING-COUNTRIES; PUBLIC-HEALTH; MEDICINE; AGENCIES; SERVICES; BURDEN; EUROPE; FIELDS; TRENDS; IMPACT Abstract: This article describes a bibliometric review of the publications on obesity research in PubMed over the last 20 years. We used Medline via the PubMed online service of the US National Library of Medicine from 1988 to 2007. The search strategy was: ([obesity] in MesH). A total of 58 325 references were retrieved, 25.5% in 1988-1997, and 74.5% in 1998-2007. The growth in the number of publications showed an exponential increase. The references were published in 3613 different journals, with 20 journals contributing 25% of obesity literature. The two journals contributing most were the International Journal of Obesity (5.1%), Obesity-Obesity Research (2.9%). North America and Europe were the most productive world areas with 44.1% and 37.9% of the literature, respectively. The US was the predominant country in number of publications, followed by the United Kingdom, Japan and Italy. The ranking of production changed when the number of publications was normalized by population, gross domestic product and obesity prevalence by countries. The great increase of publications on obesity during the period 19882007 was particularly evident in the second decade of the period which is concordant with the worldwide obesity epidemic. USA and Europe were leaders in the production of scientific articles on obesity. Addresses: [Vioque, J.; Navarrete-Munoz, E. M.; Garcia-de-la-Hera, M.] Univ Miguel Hernandez, Dept Salud Publ, Alicante, Spain; [Vioque, J.; Navarrete- Munoz, E. M.; Garcia-de-la-Hera, M.] CIBER Epidemiol & Salud Publ CIBERESP, Madrid, Spain; [Ramos, J. M.] Hosp Gen Univ Elche, Unidad Enfermedades Infecciosas, Med Interna Serv, Alicanto, Spain Reprint Address: Vioque, J, Univ Miguel Hernandez, Dpto Salud Publ, Campus San Juan,Ctra Valencia S-N, Alacant 03550, Spain. E-mail Address: vioque at umh.es ISSN: 1467-7881 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-789X.2009.00647.x fulltext: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467- 789X.2009.00647.x/abstract From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Sep 21 13:32:20 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:32:20 -0400 Subject: Ponce, FA; Lozano, AM. 2010. Academic impact and rankings of American and Canadian neurosurgical departments as assessed using the h index. JOURNAL OF NEUROSURGERY 113 (3): 447-457 Message-ID: Ponce, FA; Lozano, AM. 2010. Academic impact and rankings of American and Canadian neurosurgical departments as assessed using the h index. JOURNAL OF NEUROSURGERY 113 (3): 447-457.. Author Full Name(s): Ponce, Francisco A.; Lozano, Andres M. Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: citation analysis; neurosurgery department; bibliometrics; h index KeyWords Plus: SCIENTIFIC-RESEARCH OUTPUT; HIGHLY CITED WORKS Abstract: Object. The authors undertook a study to estimate the relative academic impact of neurosurgical departments in Canada and the US using the h index, a measure of the number of citations received by a collection of work. Methods. The study included 99 departments of neurosurgery with residency programs participating in the US National Residency Matching Program, and the 14 analogous Canadian programs. Three types of h indices were determined one reflecting the cumulative work attributed to a neurosurgical department, h(c); one restricted to the cumulative work published over the past 10 years, 11(10); and one limited to work published in 2 major North American neurosurgical journals, h(NS)(10). For an article to be included, attribution to a neurosurgical department had to appear in the address field in the database Thomson's ISI Web of Science. The three h indices were compared with each other, and their relation to other measures such as size of the department, degrees held by the faculty, and research funding was examined. Results. Significant correlations were found between the citation indices and faculty size, number of publications and the types of degrees held by the faculty, and funding by the US NIH. Three types of authorship were identified: neurosurgeon, nonclinician researcher, and nonneurosurgeon clinical affiliate. The degree to which the latter 2 nonneurosurgeon categories contributed to the departmental h index varied among departments and can confound interdepartmental comparison. Limiting articles to those published in neurosurgical journals appeared to correct for the influence of nonneurosurgeons in departmental impact and reflect neurosurgeon-driven scholarship. Conclusions. The h index may be useful in evaluating output across neurosurgery departments. (DOI: 10.3171/2010.3.JINS1032) Addresses: [Lozano, Andres M.] Univ Toronto, Toronto Western Hosp, Div Neurosurg, Toronto, ON M5T 2S8, Canada; [Ponce, Francisco A.] St Josephs Hosp, Barrow Neurol Inst, Div Neurol Surg, Phoenix, AZ USA Reprint Address: Lozano, AM, Univ Toronto, Toronto Western Hosp, Div Neurosurg, 399 Bathurst St,WW 4-447, Toronto, ON M5T 2S8, Canada. E-mail Address: lozano at uhnres.utoronto.ca ISSN: 0022-3085 DOI: 10.3171/2010.3.JNS1032 fulltext: http://thejns.org/doi/abs/10.3171/2010.3.JNS1032 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Sep 21 13:35:19 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:35:19 -0400 Subject: Falagas ME, et al. 2010. Comparison of the distribution of citations received by articles published in high, moderate, and low impact factor journals in clinical medicine. INTERNAL MEDICINE JOURNAL 40 (8): 587-591 Message-ID: Falagas, ME; Kouranos, VD; Michalopoulos, A; Rodopoulou, SP; Batsiou, MA; Karageorgopoulos, DE. 2010. Comparison of the distribution of citations received by articles published in high, moderate, and low impact factor journals in clinical medicine. INTERNAL MEDICINE JOURNAL 40 (8): 587-591. Author Full Name(s): Falagas, M. E.; Kouranos, V. D.; Michalopoulos, A.; Rodopoulou, S. P.; Batsiou, M. A.; Karageorgopoulos, D. E. Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: bibliometrics; bibliographic database; statistical distribution; citation analysis; publication Abstract: Background: Whether the journal impact factor (JIF) indicator reflects the number of citations to an average article of a journal in different subject categories is controversial. We sought to further investigate this issue in general and internal medicine journals. Methods: We selected to evaluate three journals of the above subject category, in each of three different JIF levels (high: 15.5-28.6, moderate: 4.4-4.9 and low: 1.6). Using the Scopus database, we retrieved the original research articles (after detailed screening) and review articles (as classified by Scopus) that were published in the selected journals in 2005 along with the number of citations they received in 2006 and 2007. We pooled the citations for articles of the same type in journals with the same JIF level into distinct variables. Results: There was no marked association between the distribution of citations per article published in general medical journals and their JIF. All distributions studied were skewed to the right (higher number of citations). Specifically, 16- 22% of the original research articles accounted for 50% of the total citations to this type of article for all three categories of studied journals; 34-37% of original research articles accounted for 75% of citations. The respective values for review articles were 12-18% and 29-39%. Conclusion: The distribution of citations received by articles published in high, moderate and low impact factor journals in clinical medicine seems similar. The JIF is not an accurate indicator of the citations the average article receives; articles published in low impact factor journals can still be highly cited and vice versa. Addresses: [Falagas, M. E.; Kouranos, V. D.; Karageorgopoulos, D. E.] Natl Tech Univ Athens, AIBS, Dept Med, Athens 15123, Greece; [Michalopoulos, A.] Natl Tech Univ Athens, AIBS, Dept Crit Care, Athens 15123, Greece; [Falagas, M. E.] Natl Tech Univ Athens, Henry Dunant Hosp, Dept Med, Athens 15123, Greece; [Michalopoulos, A.] Natl Tech Univ Athens, Henry Dunant Hosp, Intens Care Unit, Athens 15123, Greece; [Rodopoulou, S. P.; Batsiou, M. A.] Natl Tech Univ Athens, Sch Appl Math & Phys Sci, Athens 15123, Greece; [Falagas, M. E.] Tufts Univ, Sch Med, Dept Med, Boston, MA 02111 USA Reprint Address: Falagas, ME, Natl Tech Univ Athens, AIBS, Dept Med, 9 Neapoleos St, Athens 15123, Greece. E-mail Address: m.falagas at aibs.gr ISSN: 1444-0903 DOI: 10.1111/j.1445-5994.2010.02247.x fulltext: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1445- 5994.2010.02247.x/abstract From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Sep 21 13:39:28 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:39:28 -0400 Subject: Burgess, TF; Shaw, NE. 2010. Editorial Board Membership of Management and Business Journals: A Social Network Analysis Study of the Financial Times 40. BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT 21 (3): 627-648 Message-ID: Burgess, TF; Shaw, NE. 2010. Editorial Board Membership of Management and Business Journals: A Social Network Analysis Study of the Financial Times 40. BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT 21 (3): 627-648, Sp. Iss. SI.. Author Full Name(s): Burgess, Thomas F.; Shaw, Nicola E. Language: English Document Type: Article KeyWords Plus: RANKINGS; SCIENCE; ORGANIZATION; DISCIPLINES; AUTHORSHIP; KNOWLEDGE; QUALITY; SCHOOLS; SENSE; FIELD Abstract: We apply social network analysis to editorial board membership data for 36 of the 40 high-ranking journals forming the Financial Times list for grading business schools. Data are presented by individuals, journals, organizations and countries. Using cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling, journals are allocated to academic fields. Distributions of journals, editorial board members and business school staff by field are compared. Academics affiliated to US organizations predominate and highly ranked US organizations occupy the top positions for number of board memberships. Academics with high multiple board memberships come from a more diverse set of organizations but are still predominantly North American and male. We suggest that the domination of the sampled journal production system by special interest groups could permit academic patronage to prosper. We characterize the academic area of management (and business) as a loosely connected grouping of mono- disciplinary fields. Organization behaviour, strategy and enterprise/small business fields are over-represented in the Financial Times list while accounting, finance, marketing and operations research/management information systems are under-represented. We argue that domination by an elite and its fragmented mono-disciplinarity is not healthy for the management academic area. Addresses: [Burgess, Thomas F.; Shaw, Nicola E.] Univ Leeds, Sch Business, Leeds LS2 9JT, W Yorkshire, England Reprint Address: Burgess, TF, Univ Leeds, Sch Business, Maurice Keyworth Bldg, Leeds LS2 9JT, W Yorkshire, England. E-mail Address: tfb at lubs.leeds.ac.uk ISSN: 1045-3172 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2010.00701.x fulltext: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467- 8551.2010.00701.x/abstract From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Sep 21 13:42:32 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:42:32 -0400 Subject: Poynard, T; Thabut, D; Munteanu, M; Ratziu, V; Benhamou, Y; Deckmyn, O. 2010. Hirsch Index and Truth Survival in Clinical Research. PLOS ONE 5 (8): art. no.-e12044 Message-ID: Poynard, T; Thabut, D; Munteanu, M; Ratziu, V; Benhamou, Y; Deckmyn, O. 2010. Hirsch Index and Truth Survival in Clinical Research. PLOS ONE 5 (8): art. no.-e12044. Author Full Name(s): Poynard, Thierry; Thabut, Dominique; Munteanu, Mona; Ratziu, Vlad; Benhamou, Yves; Deckmyn, Olivier Language: English Document Type: Article KeyWords Plus: H-INDEX; INDIVIDUAL SCIENTISTS; TRIALS; OUTPUT Abstract: Background: Factors associated with the survival of truth of clinical conclusions in the medical literature are unknown. We hypothesized that publications with a first author having a higher Hirsch' index value (h-I), which quantifies and predicts an individual's scientific research output, should have a longer half-life. Methods and Results: 474 original articles concerning cirrhosis or hepatitis published from 1945 to 1999 were selected. The survivals of the main conclusions were updated in 2009. The truth survival was assessed by time- dependent methods (Kaplan Meier method and Cox). A conclusion was considered to be true, obsolete or false when three or more observers out of the six stated it to be so. 284 out of 474 conclusions (60%) were still considered true, 90 (19%) were considered obsolete and 100 (21%) false. The median of the h-I was = 24 (range 1-85). Authors with true conclusions had significantly higher h-I (median = 28) than those with obsolete (h-I = 19; P = 0.002) or false conclusions (h-I = 19; P = 0.01). The factors associated (P<0.0001) with h-I were: scientific life (h-I = 33 for. 30 years vs. 16 for, 30 years), -methodological quality score (h-I = 36 for high vs. 20 for low scores), and -positive predictive value combining power, ratio of true to not-true relationships and bias (h-I = 33 for high vs. 20 for low values). In multivariate analysis, the risk ratio of h-I was 1.003 (95% CI, 0.994-1.011), and was not significant (P = 0.56). In a subgroup restricted to 111 articles with a negative conclusion, we observed a significant independent prognostic value of h-I (risk ratio = 1.033; 95% CI, 1.008-1.059; P = 0.009). Using an extrapolation of h-I at the time of article publication there was a significant and independent prognostic value of baseline h-I (risk ratio = 0.027; P = 0.0001). Conclusions: The present study failed to clearly demonstrate that the h-index of authors was a prognostic factor for truth survival. However the h-index was associated with true conclusions, methodological quality of trials and positive predictive values. Addresses: [Poynard, Thierry; Thabut, Dominique; Ratziu, Vlad; Benhamou, Yves] Univ Paris 06, AP HP, Grp Hosp Pitie Salpetriere, Liver Ctr,Serv Hepatogastroenterol, Paris, France; [Munteanu, Mona; Deckmyn, Olivier] Biopredictive, Paris, France Reprint Address: Poynard, T, Univ Paris 06, AP HP, Grp Hosp Pitie Salpetriere, Liver Ctr,Serv Hepatogastroenterol, Paris, France. E-mail Address: tpoynard at teaser.fr ISSN: 1932-6203 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012044 fulltext: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0012044 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Sep 21 13:45:13 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:45:13 -0400 Subject: Schreiber, M. 2010. Twenty Hirsch index variants and other indicators giving more or less preference to highly cited papers. ANNALEN DER PHYSIK 19 (8): 536-554 Message-ID: Schreiber, M. 2010. Twenty Hirsch index variants and other indicators giving more or less preference to highly cited papers. ANNALEN DER PHYSIK 19 (8): 536-554.. Author Full Name(s): Schreiber, Michael Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: Hirsch index; h index; g index; citation analysis KeyWords Plus: H-INDEX; SCIENTIFIC IMPACT; R-INDEX; PHYSICISTS; CITATIONS; ECONOMICS; SCIENCES; IRELAND; OUTPUT Abstract: The Hirsch index or h-index is widely used to quantify the impact of an individual's scientific research output, determining the highest number h of a scientist's papers that received at least it citations. Several variants of the index have been proposed in order to give more or less preference to highly cited papers. I analyse the citation records of 26 physicists discussing various suggestions, in particular A, e, f, g, h(2), h(w), h(T), h, m, pi, R, s, t, w, and maxprod. The total number of all and of all cited publications as well as the highest and the average number of citations are also compared. Advantages and disadvantages of these indices and indicators are discussed. Correlation coefficients are determined quantifying which indices and indicators yield similar and which yield more deviating rankings of the 26 datasets. For 6 datasets the determination of the indices and indicators is visualized. (C) 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Weinheim Addresses: Tech Univ Chemnitz, Inst Phys, D-09107 Chemnitz, Germany Reprint Address: Schreiber, M, Tech Univ Chemnitz, Inst Phys, Reichenhainer Str 70, D-09107 Chemnitz, Germany. E-mail Address: schreiber at physik.tu-chemnitz.de ISSN: 0003-3804 DOI: 10.1002/andp.201000046 fulltext: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/andp.201000046/abstract From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Wed Sep 22 13:15:34 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:15:34 -0400 Subject: Ioannidis, JPA; Belbasis, L; Evangelou, E. 2010. Fifty-Year Fate and Impact of General Medical Journals. PLOS ONE 5 (9): art. no.-e12531 Message-ID: Ioannidis, JPA; Belbasis, L; Evangelou, E. 2010. Fifty-Year Fate and Impact of General Medical Journals. PLOS ONE 5 (9): art. no.-e12531.. Author Full Name(s): Ioannidis, John P. A.; Belbasis, Lazaros; Evangelou, Evangelos Language: English Document Type: Article KeyWords Plus: SLEEPING BEAUTIES; SCIENCE; DISEASE; CITATIONS Abstract: Background: Influential medical journals shape medical science and practice and their prestige is usually appraised by citation impact metrics, such as the journal impact factor. However, how permanent are medical journals and how stable is their impact over time? Methods and Results: We evaluated what happened to general medical journals that were publishing papers half a century ago, in 1959. Data were retrieved from ISI Web of Science for citations and PubMed (Journals function) for journal history. Of 27 eligible journals publishing in 1959, 4 have stopped circulation (including two of the most prestigious journals in 1959) and another 7 changed name between 1959 and 2009. Only 6 of these 27 journals have been published continuously with their initial name since they started circulation. The citation impact of papers published in 1959 gives a very different picture from the current journal impact factor; the correlation between the two is non-significant and very close to zero. Only 13 of the 5,223 papers published in 1959 received at least 5 citations in 2009. Conclusions: Journals are more permanent entities than single papers, but they are also subject to major change and their relative prominence can change markedly over time. Addresses: [Ioannidis, John P. A.; Belbasis, Lazaros; Evangelou, Evangelos] Univ Ioannina, Sch Med, Dept Hyg & Epidemiol, GR-45110 Ioannina, Greece; [Ioannidis, John P. A.] Fdn Res & Technol Hellas, Biomed Res Inst, Ioannina, Greece; [Ioannidis, John P. A.] Tufts Univ, Sch Med, Dept Med, Tufts Clin & Translat Sci Inst, Boston, MA 02111 USA; [Ioannidis, John P. A.] Tufts Univ, Sch Med, Inst Clin Res & Hlth Policy Studies, Tufts Med Ctr, Boston, MA 02111 USA; [Ioannidis, John P. A.] Harvard Univ, Sch Publ Hlth, Dept Epidemiol, Boston, MA 02115 USA Reprint Address: Ioannidis, JPA, Univ Ioannina, Sch Med, Dept Hyg & Epidemiol, GR-45110 Ioannina, Greece. E-mail Address: jioannid at cc.uoi.gr ISSN: 1932-6203 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012531 fulltext: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0012531 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Wed Sep 22 13:27:50 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:27:50 -0400 Subject: Mohammadhassanzadeh H, et al. 2010. A Bibliometric Overview of 30 Years of Medical Sciences Productivity in Iran. ARCHIVES OF IRANIAN MEDICINE 13 (4): 313-317 Message-ID: Mohammadhassanzadeh, H; Samadikuchaksaraei, A; Shokraneh, F; Valinejad, A; Abolghasem-Gorji, H; Yue, C. 2010. A Bibliometric Overview of 30 Years of Medical Sciences Productivity in Iran. ARCHIVES OF IRANIAN MEDICINE 13 (4): 313-317 Author Full Name(s): Mohammadhassanzadeh, Hafez; Samadikuchaksaraei, Ali; Shokraneh, Farhad; Valinejad, Ali; Abolghasem-Gorji, Hassan; Yue, Chen Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: Bibliometry; citation; Iran; medicine; production; science KeyWords Plus: BIOMEDICAL-RESEARCH Abstract: Objectives: The number of medical universities and their faculty members has significantly increased in Iran during the last 30 years. This development has led to the training of a large number of healthcare professionals. But, its effect on medical sciences productivity has not yet been fully analyzed. Here, we use a bibliometric analysis to assess the current status of Iranian medical sciences production in different subject areas. Methods: The bibliographic data of Iranian medical subjects during the years 1978 - 2008 were collected from the Science Citation Index Expanded database and analyzed according to publication number, different medical subject areas, citations and the annual Iranian mid-year population. Results: It was shown that Iranian scientists have established good collaboration with developed countries. The numbers of medical publications, even after normalization to the population size, and citations of these publications have significantly increased in recent years. It has also been shown that pharmacologic research constitutes the major theme in the Iranian medical research system and thus enjoys the highest rate of growth. Conclusion: Strengthening of the non-pharmacologic research infra-structure is advised for both basic and clinical departments, keeping in mind the existing successful research model of pharmacology in Iran. Addresses: [Mohammadhassanzadeh, Hafez; Shokraneh, Farhad] Iran Univ Med Sci, Dept Med Librarianship & Informat Sci, Fac Management & Med Informat Sci, Tehran, Iran; [Mohammadhassanzadeh, Hafez; Shokraneh, Farhad] Iran Univ Med Sci, Ctr Gifted & Talented Students, Tehran, Iran; [Samadikuchaksaraei, Ali] Iran Univ Med Sci, Dept Biotechnol Cellular & Mol, Tehran, Iran; [Samadikuchaksaraei, Ali] Iran Univ Med Sci, Burns Res Ctr, Tehran, Iran; [Valinejad, Ali] Hamadan Univ Med Sci, Dept Med Librarianship & Informat Sci, Hamadan, Iran; [Abolghasem-Gorji, Hassan] Islamic Azad Univ, Dept Hlth Sci Management, Sci & Res Branch, Tehran, Iran; [Yue, Chen] Dalian Univ Technol, WISE Lab, S&T Ethics & S&T Management, Dalian, Peoples R China Reprint Address: Samadikuchaksaraei, A, Iran Univ Med Sci, Dept Biotechnol, Hemmat Highway,POB 141556183, Tehran, Iran. E-mail Address: samadikuchaksaraci at yahoo.com ISSN: 1029-2977 fulltext: http://www.ams.ac.ir/aim/010134/0011.htm From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Wed Sep 22 13:35:00 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:35:00 -0400 Subject: Calo WA, et al. 2010. Assessing the Scientific Research Productivity of Puerto Rican Cancer Researchers: Bibliometric Analysis from the Science Citation Index. PUERTO RICO HEALTH SCIENCES JOURNAL 29 (3): 250-255 Message-ID: Calo, WA; Suarez-Balseiro, C; Suarez, E; Soto-Salgado, M; Santiago-Rodriguez, EJ; Ortiz, AP. 2010. Assessing the Scientific Research Productivity of Puerto Rican Cancer Researchers: Bibliometric Analysis from the Science Citation Index. PUERTO RICO HEALTH SCIENCES JOURNAL 29 (3): 250-255, Sp. Iss. SI. Author Full Name(s): Calo, William A.; Suarez-Balseiro, Carlos; Suarez, Erick; Soto-Salgado, Marievelisse; Santiago-Rodriguez, Eduardo J.; Ortiz, Ana P. Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: Science Citation Index; Bibliometric analysis; Cancer research; Puerto Rico KeyWords Plus: EUROPEAN-UNION; IMPACT; COLLABORATION; PUBLICATIONS; COOPERATION; AUTHORSHIP; MORTALITY; PATTERNS; BRAZIL; WORLD Abstract: Objective: The analysis of cancer scientific production in Puerto Rico is largely unexplored. The objective of this study was to characterize trends in cancer-related research publications by authors affiliated to Puerto Rican institutions in recent decades. Methods: Manuscripts were retrieved from the Science Citation Index (SCI) database from 1982 to 2009. Search criterions were that the author's affiliation field contained some institution located in Puerto Rico and that the manuscripts were related to cancer research (according to keywords from the National Cancer Institute' cancer definition). Indexes measured in our analysis included number and type of manuscript, scientific collaboration, author's affiliation, and journal visibility. All the analyses were conducted using Pro Cite for bibliographic information management and STATA and SEER Joinpoint for the statistical inquiry. Results: From 1982-2009, cancer-related papers authored by scientists located in Puerto Rico came to 451. Over the last three decades the scientific production underwent significant growth (APC = 6.4%, p<0.05) with the highest peak between 2000 and 2009 (61.4% of all articles). Universities are the local institutional sector with the highest number of authors (81.4%), and the University of Puerto Rico is the most active center in this regard (68.5%). Forty-three percent of the manuscripts (n=195) were published in 20 journals from which 14 are observed to have high visibility when compared to similar thematic journals. Conclusions: Cancer-scientific production in Puerto Rico underwent constant growth during the last three decades. A complete understanding of citing, publishing, and collaboration patterns in Puerto Rico is critical to researchers, policy makers, and health-care professionals in order to make informed decisions about cancer research priorities. [PR Health Sci J 2010;3:250-255] Addresses: [Calo, William A.; Soto-Salgado, Marievelisse] Univ Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico Canc Ctr, San Juan, PR 00927 USA; [Suarez-Balseiro, Carlos] Univ Puerto Rico, Grad Sch Informat Sci & Technol, Observ Informat Related Studies, San Juan, PR 00927 USA; [Suarez, Erick; Santiago-Rodriguez, Eduardo J.; Ortiz, Ana P.] Univ Puerto Rico, Grad Sch Publ Hlth, Dept Biostat & Epidemiol, San Juan, PR 00927 USA; [Ortiz, Ana P.] Univ Puerto Rico, Ctr Comprehens Canc, Canc Control & Populat Sci Program, San Juan, PR 00927 USA Reprint Address: Ortiz, AP, Univ Puerto Rico, Ctr Comprehens Canc, Canc Control & Populat Sci Program, PMB 711,89 De Diego Ave,Suite 105, San Juan, PR 00927 USA. E-mail Address: ana.ortiz7 at upr.edu ISSN: 0738-0658 fulltext: http://prhsj.rcm.upr.edu/index.php/prhsj/article/view/459 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Wed Sep 22 13:38:11 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:38:11 -0400 Subject: Jacso, P. 2010. Differences in the rank position of journals by Eigenfactor metrics and the five-year impact factor in the Journal Citation Reports and the Eigenfactor Project web site. ONLINE INFORMATION REVIEW 34 (3): 496-508 Message-ID: Jacso, P. 2010. Differences in the rank position of journals by Eigenfactor metrics and the five-year impact factor in the Journal Citation Reports and the Eigenfactor Project web site. ONLINE INFORMATION REVIEW 34 (3): 496-508. Author Full Name(s): Jacso, Peter Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: Information science; Databases; Serials; Quality indicators KeyWords Plus: INDICATORS; SCIENCE Abstract: Purpose - The traditional, annually issued Journal Citation Reports (JCR) have been enhanced since the 2007 edition by the Eigenfactor Scores (EFS), the Article Influence Scores (AIS) and the five-year Journal Impact Factor (JIF-5). This paper aims to focus on the issues. Design/methodology/approach - These scientometric indicators are also available from the Eigenfactor Project web site that uses data from the yearly updates of the JCR. Findings - Although supposedly identical data sources are used for computing the metrics, there are differences in the absolute scores reported, which in turn resulted in significant (more than ten rank positions) changes for several journals in the sample. Originality/value - The differences in the scores and rank positions by the three new scientometric indicators of 52 journals in the Information and Library Science category were analysed to determine the range of differences and the extent of changes in rank positions. Addresses: Univ Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA Reprint Address: Jacso, P, Univ Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA. ISSN: 1468-4527 DOI: 10.1108/14684521011054099 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Wed Sep 22 13:42:47 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:42:47 -0400 Subject: Mao, N; Wang, MH; Ho, YS. 2010. A Bibliometric Study of the Trend in Articles Related to Risk Assessment Published in Science Citation Index. HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT 16 (4): 801-824 Message-ID: Mao, N; Wang, MH; Ho, YS. 2010. A Bibliometric Study of the Trend in Articles Related to Risk Assessment Published in Science Citation Index. HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT 16 (4): 801-824. Author Full Name(s): Mao, Ning; Wang, Ming-Hung; Ho, Yuh-Shan Language: English Document Type: Article Author Keywords: risk assessment; SCI; scientometrics; trend; research hotspots; h-index; word cluster analysis KeyWords Plus: RED BOOK; CANCER; SEDIMENTS; EXPOSURE; PLUS; CARCINOGENESIS; ENVIRONMENT; PUBLICATION; TOXICITY; DISKETTE Abstract: In this study, a bibliometric method was used to evaluate the global scientific production of risk assessment research for the last 16 years and provide insights into the characteristics of the risk assessment research activities and tendencies that may exist in the papers. Data were obtained on the online version of SCI, Web of Science from 1992 to 2007. Two important respects of the paper characteristics were analyzed: (i) performance of publication and (ii) research tendency and hotspots. The main results were as follows: English-language articles took the majority of all the publications. Number of articles in this field increased from 1 in 1968 to 1037 in 2007. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment published the most papers in this field, taking 3% of all. Research tendency was investigated by statistically analyzing the distribution of paper title, author keyword, and keyword plus. Furthermore, a new method named oword cluster analysiso was successfully applied to find the research hotspots of this field. Research hotspots of risk assessment mainly focused on three subject categories: environmental science, ecology, and epidemiology. This new bibliometric method can help relevant researchers realize the panorama of global risk assessment research, and establish the further research direction. Addresses: [Ho, Yuh-Shan] Asia Univ, Trend Res Ctr, Taichung 41354, Taiwan; [Mao, Ning; Wang, Ming-Hung; Ho, Yuh-Shan] Peking Univ, Dept Environm Sci, Coll Environm Sci & Engn, Beijing 100871, Peoples R China Reprint Address: Ho, YS, Asia Univ, Trend Res Ctr, Taichung 41354, Taiwan. E-mail Address: ysho at asia.edu.tw ISSN: 1080-7039 DOI: 10.1080/10807039.2010.501248 fulltext: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10807039.2010.501248 From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Wed Sep 22 13:46:22 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:46:22 -0400 Subject: Braun, T; Andras, S. 2010. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, 2005-2009: a citation-based bibliography and impact analysis using Hirsch-type statistics. JOURNAL OF RADIOANALYTICAL AND NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY 285 (1): 1-81 Message-ID: Braun, T; Andras, S. 2010. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, 2005-2009: a citation-based bibliography and impact analysis using Hirsch-type statistics. JOURNAL OF RADIOANALYTICAL AND NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY 285 (1): 1-81. Author Full Name(s): Braun, Tibor; Andras Schubert Language: English Document Type: Bibliography Abstract: All papers published in the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry (JRNC) in the period 2005-2009 (source dataset) and all papers citing these papers and published in other journals (target dataset) have been compiled. A scientometric analysis of the datasets has been performed using Hirsch-type statistics. A comprehensive bibliography of the citing papers is presented. Addresses: [Braun, Tibor; Andras Schubert] Journal Radioanalyt & Nucl Chem, Editorial Off, Budapest, Hungary Reprint Address: Andras, S, Journal Radioanalyt & Nucl Chem, Editorial Off, Budapest, Hungary. E-mail Address: schuba at iif.hu ISSN: 0236-5731 DOI: 10.1007/s10967-010-0571-z fulltext: http://www.springerlink.com/content/q142425112027657/ From garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU Wed Sep 22 13:49:36 2010 From: garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Eugene Garfield) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:49:36 -0400 Subject: Williams, DE. 2010. Measuring Academic Research: How to Undertake a Bibliometric Study. JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP 36 (4): 362-363 Message-ID: Williams, DE. 2010. Measuring Academic Research: How to Undertake a Bibliometric Study. JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP 36 (4): 362-363. Author Full Name(s): Williams, Delmus E. Language: English Document Type: Book Review Addresses: [Williams, Delmus E.] Northcentral Univ, Prescott Valley, AZ USA Reprint Address: Williams, DE, Northcentral Univ, Prescott Valley, AZ USA. E-mail Address: delmus.williams at gmail.com ISSN: 0099-1333 DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2010.05.018 From loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET Sun Sep 26 15:08:12 2010 From: loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET (Loet Leydesdorff) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:08:12 +0200 Subject: citation indicators of scientific journals Message-ID: ** apologies for cross-postings Local Citation Impact Environments of 9,162 Scientific Journals in 2009 One can click on any of the journal names below and obtain the Pajek file corresponding to the citation impact environment ("cited") or the citation activity environment ("citing") of the respective journal. See for further explanation: "Visualization of the Citation Impact Environment of Scientific Journals: An online mapping exercise," Journal of the Amererican Society for Information Science and Technology 58(1), 25-38, 2007. Please, provide this reference if you use the information. 2009 SCI and Social SCI combined, cited SCI and Social SCI combined, citing 9162 journals The (local) matrices are since 2006 based on taking the one-percent threshold of "total citations" after correction for within-journal citations. This main-diagonal value is sometimes so large that it overshadows the environment and therefore it is no longer included in setting the threshold for the delineation of the set. (with Lutz Bornmann), How fractional counting of citations affects the Impact Factor: Normalization in terms of differences in citation potentials among fields of science Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST; in press) The ISI-Impact Factors suffer from a number of drawbacks, among them the statistics-why should one use the mean and not the median?-and the incomparability among fields of science because of systematic differences in citation behavior among fields. Can these drawbacks be counteracted by counting citation weights fractionally instead of using whole numbers in the numerators? (i) Fractional citation counts are normalized in terms of the citing sources and thus would take into account differences in citation behavior among fields of science. (ii) Differences in the resulting distributions can be tested statistically for their significance at different levels of aggregation. (iii) Fractional counting can be generalized to any document set including journals or groups of journals, and thus the significance of differences among both small and large sets can be tested. A list of fractionally counted Impact Factors for 2008 is available online at http://www.leydesdorff.net/weighted_if/weighted_if.xls. The in-between group variance among the thirteen fields of science identified in the U.S. Science and Engineering Indicators is not statistically significant after this normalization. Although citation behavior differs largely between disciplines, the reflection of these differences in fractionally counted citation distributions could not be used as a reliable instrument for the classification. (with Ismael Rafols), Indicators of the Interdisciplinarity of Journals: Diversity, Centrality, and Citations Journal of Informetrics (2011, forthcoming) A citation-based indicator for interdisciplinarity has been missing hitherto among the set of available journal indicators. In this study, we investigate network indicators (betweenness centrality), journal indicators (Shannon entropy, the Gini coefficient), and more recently proposed Rao-Stirling measures for "interdisciplinarity." The latter index combines the statistics of both citation distributions of journals (vector-based) and distances in citation networks among journals (matrix-based). The effects of various normalizations are specified and measured using the matrix of 8,207 journals contained in the Journal Citation Reports of the (Social) Science Citation Index 2008. Betweenness centrality in symmetrical (1-mode) cosine-normalized networks provides an indicator outperforming betweenness in the asymmetrical (2-mode) citation network. Among the vector-based indicators, Shannon entropy performs better than the Gini coefficient, but is sensitive to size. Science and Nature, for example, are indicated at the top of the list. The new diversity measure provides reasonable results when (1 - cosine) is assumed as a measure for the distance, but results using Euclidean distances were difficult to interpret. _____ 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 notsjb at LSU.EDU Mon Sep 27 12:14:01 2010 From: notsjb at LSU.EDU (Stephen J Bensman) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:14:01 -0500 Subject: Destruction of the Normal Paradign Message-ID: End of Chapter 5 of my book. I am really having fun with this things Stephen J. Bensman LSU Libraries Louisiana State University With his memoirs on skew variation in homogeneous materials Pearson accomplished the destruction of the normal paradigm. In his obituary of Pearson, Yule (1936) declared, "I should count it one of Pearson's greatest contributions in this field...that he enforced attention to the extraordinary variety of distributions met with in practice, illustrating the thesis with example on example and creating in this way little less than a revolution in the outlook of the ordinary statistician" (p. 81). Although Pearson's system of curves is seldom used today, Eisenhart (1974, p. 451) noted that these curves played an important role in the development of statistical theory and practice with the discovery that the sampling distributions of many statistical test functions appropriate to analyses of small samples from normal, binomial, and Poisson distributions-such as chi-squared and t-are represented by particular families of Pearson curves either directly or through simple transformation. Moreover, according to Eisenhart, the fitting of Pearson curves to observational data was extensively practiced by biologists and social scientists in the decades that followed these memoirs, and he observed, "The results did much to dispel the almost religious acceptance of the normal distribution as the mathematical model of variation of biological, physical, and social phenomena" (p. 451). >From the perspective of this book's topic, one of the most the most interesting, if controversial, examples of this is the work of Cyril Burt on the distribution of human intelligence. Burt (Mazumdar, 2004; Mcloughlin, 2000; Vernon, 2001) was the preeminent British professional psychologist from 1930 to 1950, being made Knight of the Royal Garter in 1946. He worked for the London County Council as Britain's first educational psychologist. Burt stemmed from the same intellectual tradition as Galton and Pearson, being a member of the Eugenics Society, and in 1932 he succeeded Spearman as professor of psychology at University College London, continuing that institution's Galton-Pearson statistical tradition and pioneering the integration of biometric techniques into psychology. Like Galton, Burt believed that IQ was a function of nature, not nurture. In a paper on the distribution of intelligence Burt (1957) defined intelligence "in the technical sense given to it, explicitly or implicitly, in the work of Spencer, Galton, Binet, and their followers, namely, 'the innate general factor underlying all cognitive activities'" (p. 173), and he hypothesized that it should follow a moderately asymmetrical distribution. The reason for this was that he postulated this type of distribution as a function of two possible genetic modes of inheritance: 1) in certain cases, the deviation studied may act as a recognizable trait dependent on a single, major gene; and 2) in other cases, it is apparently determined by the joint action of a large number of genes. He summarized the effect of these two interacting genetic modes in the following manner: ...The 'major genes' seem comparatively rare, but each will produce effects that are large and...for the most part detrimental; the 'polygenes' must be much more numerous, but their effects will be too small to be identified individually. With this double assumption, the resulting distribution would take the form, not of the normal curve, but of an asymmetrical, bell-shaped curve of unlimited range in either direction. p. 166. Burt identified this curve with the Pearson Type IV, citing Pearson's first memoir on skew variation that this was the prevailing in zoological and anthropological material. In this memoir Pearson (1895) described the Type IV as having "Unlimited range in both directions and skewness" (p. 360) and speculated that the reason for its prevalence in zoological measures was due to the "inter-dependence of the 'contributory' causes" (p. 412). Burt (1957) found that empirical evidence derived from intelligence tests produced statistical constants implying curves-slightly leptokurtic and negatively asymmetric-consistent with his twofold genetic hypothesis. In a follow-up paper Burt (1963) tested frequency distributions obtained from applying IQ tests to large samples of the school population and found that the distributions actually observed were more asymmetrical with longer tails than predicted by the normal curve. The best fit to the data was the Pearson Type IV. According to him, the assumption of normality led to a gross underestimate of the number highly gifted individuals in England and Wales-31.7 persons with IQs above 160 predicted by the normal curve as against the 342.3 such persons predicted by the Type IV. After his death in 1971 Burt came under assault for shoddy research methods, falsification of data, and supposedly fictitious research assistants. As a result of these attacks, the British Psychological Society Council found that Burt was a "scientific fraud" in 1979. The assault produced a reaction, whereby the original assaulters themselves came under assault. Mazumdar (2004, p. 6) points out that it is difficult to separate the question of Burt's science from politics. Burt was formed in an era when hereditarianism and eugenics were the norm, and in the egalitarian atmosphere of post-war Britain such views were considered antiquated and unjust. The assault on Burt was led largely by psychologists, who were passionate environmentalists. As a result of the battle, Burt was partially rehabilitated. In 1992 the British Psychological Society Council (1992) resolved that no universally accepted agreement was possible on this matter, declaring, "The British Psychological Society no longer has a corporate view on the truth of the allegations concerning Burt" (p. 147). In a book of readings on the measurement of intelligence Eysenck (1973)-himself a highly influential but controversial British psychologist of German descent-included Burt's 1963 article proving that the Pearson Type IV best fitted the distribution of human intelligence, stating that Burt's view on the applicability of the Pearson Type IV to the distribution of IQ is "probably correct" (p. 37). Evaluating Bert's findings, he stated that the normal and Type IV curves are not very dissimilar, but, as Burt pointed out, there are marked differences at the extremes. Referring to these marked differences at the extremes, Eysenck, stated that "from the social point of view these may be very important indeed" (p. 37). For example, at upper IQ extreme they do increase the probability of persons capable of doing high level science in the population. Eysenck's book has the following dedication: "To the Memory of Cyril Burt, who taught me." Pearson did not entirely dethrone the normal distribution, which still plays a central role in statistical theory. Snedecor and Cochran (1989, p. 40) list four reasons for this. First, the distributions of many variables such as heights of people, the lengths of ears of corn, and many linear dimensions of manufactured articles are approximately normal. These authors state that in fact any variable whose expression results from the additive contributions of many small effects will tend to be normally distributed. The second reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is that for measurements whose distributions are not normal, a simple transformation of the scale of measurement may induce approximate normality. Two such transformations-the square root and the logarithmic-are indicated by them as being often employed. According to Elliott (1977, p. 33), the Poisson is made to approximate normality by the square root transformation, whereas most distributions in scientometrics and information science require some form of the logarithmic transformation, converting them into the lognormal distribution. The third reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is the normal distribution is relatively easy work with mathematically, and their fourth reason is that even if the distribution in the original population is far from normal, the distribution of sample means tends to become normal under random sampling as the size of the sample increases. This contradiction between the importance of the normal distribution in statistical theory and its relative infrequency in reality creates a tension, which caused Geary (1947) to emphasize the importance of testing for normality and to recommend that the following warning be printed in bold type in every statistical textbook: "Normality is a myth; there never was, and never will be, a normal distribution" (p. 241). The tension between importance and infrequency caused George Box (1976), R.A. Fisher's son-in-law, to compare the role of the normal distribution in statistics to the general role of the mathematical model in science as a whole thus: In applying mathematics to subjects such as physics or statistics we make tentative assumptions about the real world which we know are false but which we believe may be useful nonetheless. The physicist knows that particles have mass and yet certain results, approximating what really happens, may be derived from the assumption that they do not. Equally, the statistician knows, for example, that in nature there never was a normal distribution, there never was a straight line, yet with normal and linear assumptions, known to be false, he can often derive results which match, to a useful approximation, those found in the real world. p. 792. What Pearson accomplished can be easily deduced from that above. By proving that most reality is not random and additive but causal and multiplicative, he converted the normal distribution from a universal descriptor of reality into a mathematical, mental construct for the distribution of error, against which to test reality. Given that much of reality is multiplicative, whereas error is additive-and the logarithmic transformation converts data from multiplicative to additive-the Galton-McAlister law of the geometric mean, which Pearson rejected as a descriptor of reality due to still being based upon Gaussian axioms, now has an important role as a law of error in statistical tests of significance. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From quentinburrell at MANX.NET Mon Sep 27 14:10:04 2010 From: quentinburrell at MANX.NET (Quentin Burrell) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:10:04 +0100 Subject: Destruction of the Normal Paradign In-Reply-To: <4928689828488E458AECE7AFDCB52CFE019ECC97@email003.lsu.edu> Message-ID: Stephen Thanks for this. Throughout my teaching career, I always referred to the Normal distribution - the capital letter signifying that it is a technical term rather than its common usage interpretation. I just wish that this was more widely adopted. I recall my first interview for an academic post and was asked "Mathematicians believe in the Normal distribution because it is an established physical fact; Physicists believe in the Normal distribution because it is an established mathematical theorem. What do you think?" (I think that the interviewer did give an attribution for the source of the question but I was too nervous to remember it. Maybe someone can enlighten me after all these years?) BW Quentin On 27 Sep 2010, at 17:14, Stephen J Bensman wrote: > Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html > End of Chapter 5 of my book. I am really having fun with this things > > Stephen J. Bensman > > LSU Libraries > > Louisiana State University > > With his memoirs on skew variation in homogeneous materials Pearson accomplished the destruction of the normal paradigm. In his obituary of Pearson, Yule (1936) declared, ?I should count it one of Pearson?s greatest contributions in this field?that he enforced attention to the extraordinary variety of distributions met with in practice, illustrating the thesis with example on example and creating in this way little less than a revolution in the outlook of the ordinary statistician? (p. 81). Although Pearson?s system of curves is seldom used today, Eisenhart (1974, p. 451) noted that these curves played an important role in the development of statistical theory and practice with the discovery that the sampling distributions of many statistical test functions appropriate to analyses of small samples from normal, binomial, and Poisson distributions?such as chi-squared and t?are represented by particular families of Pearson curves either directly or through simple transformation. Moreover, according to Eisenhart, the fitting of Pearson curves to observational data was extensively practiced by biologists and social scientists in the decades that followed these memoirs, and he observed, ?The results did much to dispel the almost religious acceptance of the normal distribution as the mathematical model of variation of biological, physical, and social phenomena? (p. 451). > > From the perspective of this book?s topic, one of the most the most interesting, if controversial, examples of this is the work of Cyril Burt on the distribution of human intelligence. Burt (Mazumdar, 2004; Mcloughlin, 2000; Vernon, 2001) was the preeminent British professional psychologist from 1930 to 1950, being made Knight of the Royal Garter in 1946. He worked for the London County Council as Britain?s first educational psychologist. Burt stemmed from the same intellectual tradition as Galton and Pearson, being a member of the Eugenics Society, and in 1932 he succeeded Spearman as professor of psychology at University College London, continuing that institution?s Galton-Pearson statistical tradition and pioneering the integration of biometric techniques into psychology. Like Galton, Burt believed that IQ was a function of nature, not nurture. In a paper on the distribution of intelligence Burt (1957) defined intelligence ?in the technical sense given to it, explicitly or implicitly, in the work of Spencer, Galton, Binet, and their followers, namely, ?the innate general factor underlying all cognitive activities?? (p. 173), and he hypothesized that it should follow a moderately asymmetrical distribution. The reason for this was that he postulated this type of distribution as a function of two possible genetic modes of inheritance: 1) in certain cases, the deviation studied may act as a recognizable trait dependent on a single, major gene; and 2) in other cases, it is apparently determined by the joint action of a large number of genes. He summarized the effect of these two interacting genetic modes in the following manner: > > ?The ?major genes? seem comparatively rare, but each will produce > > effects that are large and?for the most part detrimental; the ?polygenes? > > must be much more numerous, but their effects will be too small to be identified > > individually. With this double assumption, the resulting distribution would > > take the form, not of the normal curve, but of an asymmetrical, bell-shaped > > curve of unlimited range in either direction. p. 166. > > Burt identified this curve with the Pearson Type IV, citing Pearson?s first memoir on skew variation that this was the prevailing in zoological and anthropological material. In this memoir Pearson (1895) described the Type IV as having ?Unlimited range in both directions and skewness? (p. 360) and speculated that the reason for its prevalence in zoological measures was due to the ?inter-dependence of the ?contributory? causes? (p. 412). Burt (1957) found that empirical evidence derived from intelligence tests produced statistical constants implying curves?slightly leptokurtic and negatively asymmetric?consistent with his twofold genetic hypothesis. In a follow-up paper Burt (1963) tested frequency distributions obtained from applying IQ tests to large samples of the school population and found that the distributions actually observed were more asymmetrical with longer tails than predicted by the normal curve. The best fit to the data was the Pearson Type IV. According to him, the assumption of normality led to a gross underestimate of the number highly gifted individuals in England and Wales?31.7 persons with IQs above 160 predicted by the normal curve as against the 342.3 such persons predicted by the Type IV. > > After his death in 1971 Burt came under assault for shoddy research methods, falsification of data, and supposedly fictitious research assistants. As a result of these attacks, the British Psychological Society Council found that Burt was a ?scientific fraud? in 1979. The assault produced a reaction, whereby the original assaulters themselves came under assault. Mazumdar (2004, p. 6) points out that it is difficult to separate the question of Burt?s science from politics. Burt was formed in an era when hereditarianism and eugenics were the norm, and in the egalitarian atmosphere of post-war Britain such views were considered antiquated and unjust. The assault on Burt was led largely by psychologists, who were passionate environmentalists. As a result of the battle, Burt was partially rehabilitated. In 1992 the British Psychological Society Council (1992) resolved that no universally accepted agreement was possible on this matter, declaring, ?The British Psychological Society no longer has a corporate view on the truth of the allegations concerning Burt? (p. 147). In a book of readings on the measurement of intelligence Eysenck (1973)?himself a highly influential but controversial British psychologist of German descent?included Burt?s 1963 article proving that the Pearson Type IV best fitted the distribution of human intelligence, stating that Burt?s view on the applicability of the Pearson Type IV to the distribution of IQ is ?probably correct? (p. 37). Evaluating Bert?s findings, he stated that the normal and Type IV curves are not very dissimilar, but, as Burt pointed out, there are marked differences at the extremes. Referring to these marked differences at the extremes, Eysenck, stated that ?from the social point of view these may be very important indeed? (p. 37). For example, at upper IQ extreme they do increase the probability of persons capable of doing high level science in the population. Eysenck?s book has the following dedication: ?To the Memory of Cyril Burt, who taught me.? > > Pearson did not entirely dethrone the normal distribution, which still plays a central role in statistical theory. Snedecor and Cochran (1989, p. 40) list four reasons for this. First, the distributions of many variables such as heights of people, the lengths of ears of corn, and many linear dimensions of manufactured articles are approximately normal. These authors state that in fact any variable whose expression results from the additive contributions of many small effects will tend to be normally distributed. The second reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is that for measurements whose distributions are not normal, a simple transformation of the scale of measurement may induce approximate normality. Two such transformations?the square root and the logarithmic?are indicated by them as being often employed. According to Elliott (1977, p. 33), the Poisson is made to approximate normality by the square root transformation, whereas most distributions in scientometrics and information science require some form of the logarithmic transformation, converting them into the lognormal distribution. The third reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is the normal distribution is relatively easy work with mathematically, and their fourth reason is that even if the distribution in the original population is far from normal, the distribution of sample means tends to become normal under random sampling as the size of the sample increases. This contradiction between the importance of the normal distribution in statistical theory and its relative infrequency in reality creates a tension, which caused Geary (1947) to emphasize the importance of testing for normality and to recommend that the following warning be printed in bold type in every statistical textbook: ?Normality is a myth; there never was, and never will be, a normal distribution? (p. 241). The tension between importance and infrequency caused George Box (1976), R.A. Fisher?s son-in-law, to compare the role of the normal distribution in statistics to the general role of the mathematical model in science as a whole thus: > > > > In applying mathematics to subjects such as physics or statistics we > > make tentative assumptions about the real world which we know are > > false but which we believe may be useful nonetheless. The physicist > > knows that particles have mass and yet certain results, approximating > > what really happens, may be derived from the assumption that they > > do not. Equally, the statistician knows, for example, that in nature > > there never was a normal distribution, there never was a straight line, > > yet with normal and linear assumptions, known to be false, he can > > often derive results which match, to a useful approximation, those > > found in the real world. p. 792. > > > > What Pearson accomplished can be easily deduced from that above. By proving that most reality is not random and additive but causal and multiplicative, he converted the normal distribution from a universal descriptor of reality into a mathematical, mental construct for the distribution of error, against which to test reality. Given that much of reality is multiplicative, whereas error is additive?and the logarithmic transformation converts data from multiplicative to additive?the Galton-McAlister law of the geometric mean, which Pearson rejected as a descriptor of reality due to still being based upon Gaussian axioms, now has an important role as a law of error in statistical tests of significance. > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From notsjb at LSU.EDU Mon Sep 27 15:07:52 2010 From: notsjb at LSU.EDU (Stephen J Bensman) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:07:52 -0500 Subject: Destruction of the Normal Paradign In-Reply-To: <8C201D5D-282C-4DE8-A004-1BFB0835B87D@manx.net> Message-ID: Quentin, Thank you for the compliment. It is a relief to receive it from a statistician of your caliber. I am not a statistician but a historian writing a history of statistics. I want you know that I have your work scheduled for about a half chapter in the book. You will be there after the breakthrough made by D. J. Urquhart and his son and daughter-in-law-John and Norma-who first developed the compound Poisson or negative binomial as the model for the library use of scientific journals in a study of usage at the NLST. I'll cover your presentation to the Royal Statistical Society and subsequent dispute in J. Doc. If you interested, I have already written most of it, and it is posted on the Garfield Web site at the following URL: http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/bensman/bensman.html The Urquhart part is covered best in the article entitled Urquhart's Law, and your work and that of Jean Teague are discussed in the article entitled "Scientific and Technical Serials Holdings Observations." I did not know about Urquhart when I wrote the latter. In the book I will be putting all the material together. If you want, you can over what I wrote about your work, and I will incorporate your suggestions and objections. There is no hurry, because I am months away from your chapter. Again-thank you for the compliment. 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 Quentin Burrell Sent: Monday, September 27, 2010 1:10 PM To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Destruction of the Normal Paradign Stephen Thanks for this. Throughout my teaching career, I always referred to the Normal distribution - the capital letter signifying that it is a technical term rather than its common usage interpretation. I just wish that this was more widely adopted. I recall my first interview for an academic post and was asked "Mathematicians believe in the Normal distribution because it is an established physical fact; Physicists believe in the Normal distribution because it is an established mathematical theorem. What do you think?" (I think that the interviewer did give an attribution for the source of the question but I was too nervous to remember it. Maybe someone can enlighten me after all these years?) BW Quentin On 27 Sep 2010, at 17:14, Stephen J Bensman wrote: End of Chapter 5 of my book. I am really having fun with this things Stephen J. Bensman LSU Libraries Louisiana State University With his memoirs on skew variation in homogeneous materials Pearson accomplished the destruction of the normal paradigm. In his obituary of Pearson, Yule (1936) declared, "I should count it one of Pearson's greatest contributions in this field...that he enforced attention to the extraordinary variety of distributions met with in practice, illustrating the thesis with example on example and creating in this way little less than a revolution in the outlook of the ordinary statistician" (p. 81). Although Pearson's system of curves is seldom used today, Eisenhart (1974, p. 451) noted that these curves played an important role in the development of statistical theory and practice with the discovery that the sampling distributions of many statistical test functions appropriate to analyses of small samples from normal, binomial, and Poisson distributions-such as chi-squared and t-are represented by particular families of Pearson curves either directly or through simple transformation. Moreover, according to Eisenhart, the fitting of Pearson curves to observational data was extensively practiced by biologists and social scientists in the decades that followed these memoirs, and he observed, "The results did much to dispel the almost religious acceptance of the normal distribution as the mathematical model of variation of biological, physical, and social phenomena" (p. 451). >From the perspective of this book's topic, one of the most the most interesting, if controversial, examples of this is the work of Cyril Burt on the distribution of human intelligence. Burt (Mazumdar, 2004; Mcloughlin, 2000; Vernon, 2001) was the preeminent British professional psychologist from 1930 to 1950, being made Knight of the Royal Garter in 1946. He worked for the London County Council as Britain's first educational psychologist. Burt stemmed from the same intellectual tradition as Galton and Pearson, being a member of the Eugenics Society, and in 1932 he succeeded Spearman as professor of psychology at University College London, continuing that institution's Galton-Pearson statistical tradition and pioneering the integration of biometric techniques into psychology. Like Galton, Burt believed that IQ was a function of nature, not nurture. In a paper on the distribution of intelligence Burt (1957) defined intelligence "in the technical sense given to it, explicitly or implicitly, in the work of Spencer, Galton, Binet, and their followers, namely, 'the innate general factor underlying all cognitive activities'" (p. 173), and he hypothesized that it should follow a moderately asymmetrical distribution. The reason for this was that he postulated this type of distribution as a function of two possible genetic modes of inheritance: 1) in certain cases, the deviation studied may act as a recognizable trait dependent on a single, major gene; and 2) in other cases, it is apparently determined by the joint action of a large number of genes. He summarized the effect of these two interacting genetic modes in the following manner: ...The 'major genes' seem comparatively rare, but each will produce effects that are large and...for the most part detrimental; the 'polygenes' must be much more numerous, but their effects will be too small to be identified individually. With this double assumption, the resulting distribution would take the form, not of the normal curve, but of an asymmetrical, bell-shaped curve of unlimited range in either direction. p. 166. Burt identified this curve with the Pearson Type IV, citing Pearson's first memoir on skew variation that this was the prevailing in zoological and anthropological material. In this memoir Pearson (1895) described the Type IV as having "Unlimited range in both directions and skewness" (p. 360) and speculated that the reason for its prevalence in zoological measures was due to the "inter-dependence of the 'contributory' causes" (p. 412). Burt (1957) found that empirical evidence derived from intelligence tests produced statistical constants implying curves-slightly leptokurtic and negatively asymmetric-consistent with his twofold genetic hypothesis. In a follow-up paper Burt (1963) tested frequency distributions obtained from applying IQ tests to large samples of the school population and found that the distributions actually observed were more asymmetrical with longer tails than predicted by the normal curve. The best fit to the data was the Pearson Type IV. According to him, the assumption of normality led to a gross underestimate of the number highly gifted individuals in England and Wales-31.7 persons with IQs above 160 predicted by the normal curve as against the 342.3 such persons predicted by the Type IV. After his death in 1971 Burt came under assault for shoddy research methods, falsification of data, and supposedly fictitious research assistants. As a result of these attacks, the British Psychological Society Council found that Burt was a "scientific fraud" in 1979. The assault produced a reaction, whereby the original assaulters themselves came under assault. Mazumdar (2004, p. 6) points out that it is difficult to separate the question of Burt's science from politics. Burt was formed in an era when hereditarianism and eugenics were the norm, and in the egalitarian atmosphere of post-war Britain such views were considered antiquated and unjust. The assault on Burt was led largely by psychologists, who were passionate environmentalists. As a result of the battle, Burt was partially rehabilitated. In 1992 the British Psychological Society Council (1992) resolved that no universally accepted agreement was possible on this matter, declaring, "The British Psychological Society no longer has a corporate view on the truth of the allegations concerning Burt" (p. 147). In a book of readings on the measurement of intelligence Eysenck (1973)-himself a highly influential but controversial British psychologist of German descent-included Burt's 1963 article proving that the Pearson Type IV best fitted the distribution of human intelligence, stating that Burt's view on the applicability of the Pearson Type IV to the distribution of IQ is "probably correct" (p. 37). Evaluating Bert's findings, he stated that the normal and Type IV curves are not very dissimilar, but, as Burt pointed out, there are marked differences at the extremes. Referring to these marked differences at the extremes, Eysenck, stated that "from the social point of view these may be very important indeed" (p. 37). For example, at upper IQ extreme they do increase the probability of persons capable of doing high level science in the population. Eysenck's book has the following dedication: "To the Memory of Cyril Burt, who taught me." Pearson did not entirely dethrone the normal distribution, which still plays a central role in statistical theory. Snedecor and Cochran (1989, p. 40) list four reasons for this. First, the distributions of many variables such as heights of people, the lengths of ears of corn, and many linear dimensions of manufactured articles are approximately normal. These authors state that in fact any variable whose expression results from the additive contributions of many small effects will tend to be normally distributed. The second reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is that for measurements whose distributions are not normal, a simple transformation of the scale of measurement may induce approximate normality. Two such transformations-the square root and the logarithmic-are indicated by them as being often employed. According to Elliott (1977, p. 33), the Poisson is made to approximate normality by the square root transformation, whereas most distributions in scientometrics and information science require some form of the logarithmic transformation, converting them into the lognormal distribution. The third reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is the normal distribution is relatively easy work with mathematically, and their fourth reason is that even if the distribution in the original population is far from normal, the distribution of sample means tends to become normal under random sampling as the size of the sample increases. This contradiction between the importance of the normal distribution in statistical theory and its relative infrequency in reality creates a tension, which caused Geary (1947) to emphasize the importance of testing for normality and to recommend that the following warning be printed in bold type in every statistical textbook: "Normality is a myth; there never was, and never will be, a normal distribution" (p. 241). The tension between importance and infrequency caused George Box (1976), R.A. Fisher's son-in-law, to compare the role of the normal distribution in statistics to the general role of the mathematical model in science as a whole thus: In applying mathematics to subjects such as physics or statistics we make tentative assumptions about the real world which we know are false but which we believe may be useful nonetheless. The physicist knows that particles have mass and yet certain results, approximating what really happens, may be derived from the assumption that they do not. Equally, the statistician knows, for example, that in nature there never was a normal distribution, there never was a straight line, yet with normal and linear assumptions, known to be false, he can often derive results which match, to a useful approximation, those found in the real world. p. 792. What Pearson accomplished can be easily deduced from that above. By proving that most reality is not random and additive but causal and multiplicative, he converted the normal distribution from a universal descriptor of reality into a mathematical, mental construct for the distribution of error, against which to test reality. Given that much of reality is multiplicative, whereas error is additive-and the logarithmic transformation converts data from multiplicative to additive-the Galton-McAlister law of the geometric mean, which Pearson rejected as a descriptor of reality due to still being based upon Gaussian axioms, now has an important role as a law of error in statistical tests of significance. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kboyack at MAPOFSCIENCE.COM Tue Sep 28 16:11:44 2010 From: kboyack at MAPOFSCIENCE.COM (Kevin Boyack) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:11:44 -0600 Subject: Using global mapping to create more accurate document-level maps of research fields Message-ID: Dear colleagues - we have a new article available: Using global mapping to create more accurate document-level maps of research fields JASIST (forthcoming); preprint self-archived at http://www.mapofscience.com/images/pdf/global_map_infosci_preprint.pdf We describe two general approaches to creating document-level maps of science. To create a local map one defines and directly maps a sample of data, such as all literature published in a set of information science journals. To create a global map of a research field one maps 'all of science' and then locates a literature sample within that full context. We provide a deductive argument that global mapping should create more accurate partitions of a research field than local mapping, followed by practical reasons why this may not be so. The field of information science is then mapped at the document level using both local and global methods to provide a case illustration of the differences between the methods. Textual coherence is used to assess the accuracies of both maps. We find that document clusters in the global map have significantly higher coherence than those in the local map, and that the global map provides unique insights into the field of information science that cannot be discerned from the local map. Specifically, we show that information science and computer science have a large interface and that computer science is the more progressive discipline at that interface. We also show that research communities in temporally linked threads have a much higher coherence than isolated communities, and that this feature can be used to predict which threads will persist into a subsequent year. Methods that could increase the accuracy of both local and global maps in the future are also discussed. Dick Klavans and Kevin Boyack SciTech Strategies, Inc. http://www.mapofscience.com/publication.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From j.hartley at PSY.KEELE.AC.UK Wed Sep 29 06:14:31 2010 From: j.hartley at PSY.KEELE.AC.UK (James Hartley) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:14:31 +0100 Subject: Destruction of the Normal Paradign Message-ID: Thanks for this. In a slightly related matter colleagues may be interested in a paper criticizing Burt's work on typographical design. See: Hartley J. & Rooum, D. (1983). Sir Cyril Burt and typography: A re-evaluation. British Journal of Psychology, 74, 203-212. Copes available on request (by post!). James Hartley School of Psychology Keele University Staffordshire ST5 5BG UK j.hartley at psy.keele.ac.uk http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ps/people/JHartley/index.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: Quentin Burrell To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Sent: Monday, September 27, 2010 7:10 PM Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Destruction of the Normal Paradign Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html Stephen Thanks for this. Throughout my teaching career, I always referred to the Normal distribution - the capital letter signifying that it is a technical term rather than its common usage interpretation. I just wish that this was more widely adopted. I recall my first interview for an academic post and was asked "Mathematicians believe in the Normal distribution because it is an established physical fact; Physicists believe in the Normal distribution because it is an established mathematical theorem. What do you think?" (I think that the interviewer did give an attribution for the source of the question but I was too nervous to remember it. Maybe someone can enlighten me after all these years?) BW Quentin On 27 Sep 2010, at 17:14, Stephen J Bensman wrote: Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html End of Chapter 5 of my book. I am really having fun with this things Stephen J. Bensman LSU Libraries Louisiana State University With his memoirs on skew variation in homogeneous materials Pearson accomplished the destruction of the normal paradigm. In his obituary of Pearson, Yule (1936) declared, ?I should count it one of Pearson?s greatest contributions in this field?that he enforced attention to the extraordinary variety of distributions met with in practice, illustrating the thesis with example on example and creating in this way little less than a revolution in the outlook of the ordinary statistician? (p. 81). Although Pearson?s system of curves is seldom used today, Eisenhart (1974, p. 451) noted that these curves played an important role in the development of statistical theory and practice with the discovery that the sampling distributions of many statistical test functions appropriate to analyses of small samples from normal, binomial, and Poisson distributions?such as chi-squared and t?are represented by particular families of Pearson curves either directly or through simple transformation. Moreover, according to Eisenhart, the fitting of Pearson curves to observational data was extensively practiced by biologists and social scientists in the decades that followed these memoirs, and he observed, ?The results did much to dispel the almost religious acceptance of the normal distribution as the mathematical model of variation of biological, physical, and social phenomena? (p. 451). From the perspective of this book?s topic, one of the most the most interesting, if controversial, examples of this is the work of Cyril Burt on the distribution of human intelligence. Burt (Mazumdar, 2004; Mcloughlin, 2000; Vernon, 2001) was the preeminent British professional psychologist from 1930 to 1950, being made Knight of the Royal Garter in 1946. He worked for the London County Council as Britain?s first educational psychologist. Burt stemmed from the same intellectual tradition as Galton and Pearson, being a member of the Eugenics Society, and in 1932 he succeeded Spearman as professor of psychology at University College London, continuing that institution?s Galton-Pearson statistical tradition and pioneering the integration of biometric techniques into psychology. Like Galton, Burt believed that IQ was a function of nature, not nurture. In a paper on the distribution of intelligence Burt (1957) defined intelligence ?in the technical sense given to it, explicitly or implicitly, in the work of Spencer, Galton, Binet, and their followers, namely, ?the innate general factor underlying all cognitive activities?? (p. 173), and he hypothesized that it should follow a moderately asymmetrical distribution. The reason for this was that he postulated this type of distribution as a function of two possible genetic modes of inheritance: 1) in certain cases, the deviation studied may act as a recognizable trait dependent on a single, major gene; and 2) in other cases, it is apparently determined by the joint action of a large number of genes. He summarized the effect of these two interacting genetic modes in the following manner: ?The ?major genes? seem comparatively rare, but each will produce effects that are large and?for the most part detrimental; the ?polygenes? must be much more numerous, but their effects will be too small to be identified individually. With this double assumption, the resulting distribution would take the form, not of the normal curve, but of an asymmetrical, bell-shaped curve of unlimited range in either direction. p. 166. Burt identified this curve with the Pearson Type IV, citing Pearson?s first memoir on skew variation that this was the prevailing in zoological and anthropological material. In this memoir Pearson (1895) described the Type IV as having ?Unlimited range in both directions and skewness? (p. 360) and speculated that the reason for its prevalence in zoological measures was due to the ?inter-dependence of the ?contributory? causes? (p. 412). Burt (1957) found that empirical evidence derived from intelligence tests produced statistical constants implying curves?slightly leptokurtic and negatively asymmetric?consistent with his twofold genetic hypothesis. In a follow-up paper Burt (1963) tested frequency distributions obtained from applying IQ tests to large samples of the school population and found that the distributions actually observed were more asymmetrical with longer tails than predicted by the normal curve. The best fit to the data was the Pearson Type IV. According to him, the assumption of normality led to a gross underestimate of the number highly gifted individuals in England and Wales?31.7 persons with IQs above 160 predicted by the normal curve as against the 342.3 such persons predicted by the Type IV. After his death in 1971 Burt came under assault for shoddy research methods, falsification of data, and supposedly fictitious research assistants. As a result of these attacks, the British Psychological Society Council found that Burt was a ?scientific fraud? in 1979. The assault produced a reaction, whereby the original assaulters themselves came under assault. Mazumdar (2004, p. 6) points out that it is difficult to separate the question of Burt?s science from politics. Burt was formed in an era when hereditarianism and eugenics were the norm, and in the egalitarian atmosphere of post-war Britain such views were considered antiquated and unjust. The assault on Burt was led largely by psychologists, who were passionate environmentalists. As a result of the battle, Burt was partially rehabilitated. In 1992 the British Psychological Society Council (1992) resolved that no universally accepted agreement was possible on this matter, declaring, ?The British Psychological Society no longer has a corporate view on the truth of the allegations concerning Burt? (p. 147). In a book of readings on the measurement of intelligence Eysenck (1973)?himself a highly influential but controversial British psychologist of German descent?included Burt?s 1963 article proving that the Pearson Type IV best fitted the distribution of human intelligence, stating that Burt?s view on the applicability of the Pearson Type IV to the distribution of IQ is ?probably correct? (p. 37). Evaluating Bert?s findings, he stated that the normal and Type IV curves are not very dissimilar, but, as Burt pointed out, there are marked differences at the extremes. Referring to these marked differences at the extremes, Eysenck, stated that ?from the social point of view these may be very important indeed? (p. 37). For example, at upper IQ extreme they do increase the probability of persons capable of doing high level science in the population. Eysenck?s book has the following dedication: ?To the Memory of Cyril Burt, who taught me.? Pearson did not entirely dethrone the normal distribution, which still plays a central role in statistical theory. Snedecor and Cochran (1989, p. 40) list four reasons for this. First, the distributions of many variables such as heights of people, the lengths of ears of corn, and many linear dimensions of manufactured articles are approximately normal. These authors state that in fact any variable whose expression results from the additive contributions of many small effects will tend to be normally distributed. The second reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is that for measurements whose distributions are not normal, a simple transformation of the scale of measurement may induce approximate normality. Two such transformations?the square root and the logarithmic?are indicated by them as being often employed. According to Elliott (1977, p. 33), the Poisson is made to approximate normality by the square root transformation, whereas most distributions in scientometrics and information science require some form of the logarithmic transformation, converting them into the lognormal distribution. The third reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is the normal distribution is relatively easy work with mathematically, and their fourth reason is that even if the distribution in the original population is far from normal, the distribution of sample means tends to become normal under random sampling as the size of the sample increases. This contradiction between the importance of the normal distribution in statistical theory and its relative infrequency in reality creates a tension, which caused Geary (1947) to emphasize the importance of testing for normality and to recommend that the following warning be printed in bold type in every statistical textbook: ?Normality is a myth; there never was, and never will be, a normal distribution? (p. 241). The tension between importance and infrequency caused George Box (1976), R.A. Fisher?s son-in-law, to compare the role of the normal distribution in statistics to the general role of the mathematical model in science as a whole thus: In applying mathematics to subjects such as physics or statistics we make tentative assumptions about the real world which we know are false but which we believe may be useful nonetheless. The physicist knows that particles have mass and yet certain results, approximating what really happens, may be derived from the assumption that they do not. Equally, the statistician knows, for example, that in nature there never was a normal distribution, there never was a straight line, yet with normal and linear assumptions, known to be false, he can often derive results which match, to a useful approximation, those found in the real world. p. 792. What Pearson accomplished can be easily deduced from that above. By proving that most reality is not random and additive but causal and multiplicative, he converted the normal distribution from a universal descriptor of reality into a mathematical, mental construct for the distribution of error, against which to test reality. Given that much of reality is multiplicative, whereas error is additive?and the logarithmic transformation converts data from multiplicative to additive?the Galton-McAlister law of the geometric mean, which Pearson rejected as a descriptor of reality due to still being based upon Gaussian axioms, now has an important role as a law of error in statistical tests of significance. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ksc at LIBRARY.IISC.ERNET.IN Wed Sep 29 06:31:51 2010 From: ksc at LIBRARY.IISC.ERNET.IN (K S Chudamani) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:01:51 +0530 Subject: citation indicators of scientific journals In-Reply-To: <000d01cb5dae$2b07b850$811728f0$@leydesdorff.net> Message-ID: I would like to point out that in a study conducted in 1998, i have shown that segregation of journals based on subject and then using the impact factor for delineation of thresholds is an useful exercise for identification of important journals Chudamani -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. From notsjb at LSU.EDU Wed Sep 29 11:35:05 2010 From: notsjb at LSU.EDU (Stephen J Bensman) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:35:05 -0500 Subject: Destruction of the Normal Paradigm Message-ID: Thanks for the thanks. It is further validation that I have an accurate grasp of the topic. In return I want to pose for you a conundrum that bothers me. It is well known that it is really impossible to distinguish the effects of nature from nurture. These two interact, and, from the beginning , the main criticism of the hereditarian position has always been that it is impossible to distinguish the effects of one from the other. Unfortunately this leads to the uncomfortable fact that certain persons and groups (ethnic, religious, social, national, etc.) do far better in science than others, leading to highly skewed scientometric distributions. For example, the historical contribution of Britain to the advancement of science has been "disproportionate." I will let you deduce the egalitarian implications from my use of this modern diplomatic term. In his 1869 book, Hereditary Genius, where he posited the normal distribution of human intelligence, Galton gave the scores of students on the test for mathematical honors at Cambridge for two years in the 1860s. I have created the graph below from his figures: The position of the top wranglers such as Pearson, Keynes, etc., is quite clear. I call this the first scientometric distribution, for it is typical of the distributions found in article productivity, citations, library use, etc. My question to you is how do we go from an intelligence distribution either of the normal or Pearson Type IV type to this type of distribution. Burt was dealing with problem that the distribution of IQ scores is not representative but an artifact of the way these tests are structured. Or is the difference of the distributions a function of the fact that in scientometrics we are drawing our samples only from the extreme right on the intelligence scale? This has always been a problem that has puzzled me. 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 James Hartley Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 5:15 AM To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Destruction of the Normal Paradign Thanks for this. In a slightly related matter colleagues may be interested in a paper criticizing Burt's work on typographical design. See: Hartley J. & Rooum, D. (1983). Sir Cyril Burt and typography: A re-evaluation. British Journal of Psychology, 74, 203-212. Copes available on request (by post!). James Hartley School of Psychology Keele University Staffordshire ST5 5BG UK j.hartley at psy.keele.ac.uk http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ps/people/JHartley/index.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: Quentin Burrell To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Sent: Monday, September 27, 2010 7:10 PM Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Destruction of the Normal Paradign Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html Stephen Thanks for this. Throughout my teaching career, I always referred to the Normal distribution - the capital letter signifying that it is a technical term rather than its common usage interpretation. I just wish that this was more widely adopted. I recall my first interview for an academic post and was asked "Mathematicians believe in the Normal distribution because it is an established physical fact; Physicists believe in the Normal distribution because it is an established mathematical theorem. What do you think?" (I think that the interviewer did give an attribution for the source of the question but I was too nervous to remember it. Maybe someone can enlighten me after all these years?) BW Quentin On 27 Sep 2010, at 17:14, Stephen J Bensman wrote: Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html End of Chapter 5 of my book. I am really having fun with this things Stephen J. Bensman LSU Libraries Louisiana State University With his memoirs on skew variation in homogeneous materials Pearson accomplished the destruction of the normal paradigm. In his obituary of Pearson, Yule (1936) declared, "I should count it one of Pearson's greatest contributions in this field...that he enforced attention to the extraordinary variety of distributions met with in practice, illustrating the thesis with example on example and creating in this way little less than a revolution in the outlook of the ordinary statistician" (p. 81). Although Pearson's system of curves is seldom used today, Eisenhart (1974, p. 451) noted that these curves played an important role in the development of statistical theory and practice with the discovery that the sampling distributions of many statistical test functions appropriate to analyses of small samples from normal, binomial, and Poisson distributions-such as chi-squared and t-are represented by particular families of Pearson curves either directly or through simple transformation. Moreover, according to Eisenhart, the fitting of Pearson curves to observational data was extensively practiced by biologists and social scientists in the decades that followed these memoirs, and he observed, "The results did much to dispel the almost religious acceptance of the normal distribution as the mathematical model of variation of biological, physical, and social phenomena" (p. 451). From the perspective of this book's topic, one of the most the most interesting, if controversial, examples of this is the work of Cyril Burt on the distribution of human intelligence. Burt (Mazumdar, 2004; Mcloughlin, 2000; Vernon, 2001) was the preeminent British professional psychologist from 1930 to 1950, being made Knight of the Royal Garter in 1946. He worked for the London County Council as Britain's first educational psychologist. Burt stemmed from the same intellectual tradition as Galton and Pearson, being a member of the Eugenics Society, and in 1932 he succeeded Spearman as professor of psychology at University College London, continuing that institution's Galton-Pearson statistical tradition and pioneering the integration of biometric techniques into psychology. Like Galton, Burt believed that IQ was a function of nature, not nurture. In a paper on the distribution of intelligence Burt (1957) defined intelligence "in the technical sense given to it, explicitly or implicitly, in the work of Spencer, Galton, Binet, and their followers, namely, 'the innate general factor underlying all cognitive activities'" (p. 173), and he hypothesized that it should follow a moderately asymmetrical distribution. The reason for this was that he postulated this type of distribution as a function of two possible genetic modes of inheritance: 1) in certain cases, the deviation studied may act as a recognizable trait dependent on a single, major gene; and 2) in other cases, it is apparently determined by the joint action of a large number of genes. He summarized the effect of these two interacting genetic modes in the following manner: ...The 'major genes' seem comparatively rare, but each will produce effects that are large and...for the most part detrimental; the 'polygenes' must be much more numerous, but their effects will be too small to be identified individually. With this double assumption, the resulting distribution would take the form, not of the normal curve, but of an asymmetrical, bell-shaped curve of unlimited range in either direction. p. 166. Burt identified this curve with the Pearson Type IV, citing Pearson's first memoir on skew variation that this was the prevailing in zoological and anthropological material. In this memoir Pearson (1895) described the Type IV as having "Unlimited range in both directions and skewness" (p. 360) and speculated that the reason for its prevalence in zoological measures was due to the "inter-dependence of the 'contributory' causes" (p. 412). Burt (1957) found that empirical evidence derived from intelligence tests produced statistical constants implying curves-slightly leptokurtic and negatively asymmetric-consistent with his twofold genetic hypothesis. In a follow-up paper Burt (1963) tested frequency distributions obtained from applying IQ tests to large samples of the school population and found that the distributions actually observed were more asymmetrical with longer tails than predicted by the normal curve. The best fit to the data was the Pearson Type IV. According to him, the assumption of normality led to a gross underestimate of the number highly gifted individuals in England and Wales-31.7 persons with IQs above 160 predicted by the normal curve as against the 342.3 such persons predicted by the Type IV. After his death in 1971 Burt came under assault for shoddy research methods, falsification of data, and supposedly fictitious research assistants. As a result of these attacks, the British Psychological Society Council found that Burt was a "scientific fraud" in 1979. The assault produced a reaction, whereby the original assaulters themselves came under assault. Mazumdar (2004, p. 6) points out that it is difficult to separate the question of Burt's science from politics. Burt was formed in an era when hereditarianism and eugenics were the norm, and in the egalitarian atmosphere of post-war Britain such views were considered antiquated and unjust. The assault on Burt was led largely by psychologists, who were passionate environmentalists. As a result of the battle, Burt was partially rehabilitated. In 1992 the British Psychological Society Council (1992) resolved that no universally accepted agreement was possible on this matter, declaring, "The British Psychological Society no longer has a corporate view on the truth of the allegations concerning Burt" (p. 147). In a book of readings on the measurement of intelligence Eysenck (1973)-himself a highly influential but controversial British psychologist of German descent-included Burt's 1963 article proving that the Pearson Type IV best fitted the distribution of human intelligence, stating that Burt's view on the applicability of the Pearson Type IV to the distribution of IQ is "probably correct" (p. 37). Evaluating Bert's findings, he stated that the normal and Type IV curves are not very dissimilar, but, as Burt pointed out, there are marked differences at the extremes. Referring to these marked differences at the extremes, Eysenck, stated that "from the social point of view these may be very important indeed" (p. 37). For example, at upper IQ extreme they do increase the probability of persons capable of doing high level science in the population. Eysenck's book has the following dedication: "To the Memory of Cyril Burt, who taught me." Pearson did not entirely dethrone the normal distribution, which still plays a central role in statistical theory. Snedecor and Cochran (1989, p. 40) list four reasons for this. First, the distributions of many variables such as heights of people, the lengths of ears of corn, and many linear dimensions of manufactured articles are approximately normal. These authors state that in fact any variable whose expression results from the additive contributions of many small effects will tend to be normally distributed. The second reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is that for measurements whose distributions are not normal, a simple transformation of the scale of measurement may induce approximate normality. Two such transformations-the square root and the logarithmic-are indicated by them as being often employed. According to Elliott (1977, p. 33), the Poisson is made to approximate normality by the square root transformation, whereas most distributions in scientometrics and information science require some form of the logarithmic transformation, converting them into the lognormal distribution. The third reason listed by Snedecor and Cochran is the normal distribution is relatively easy work with mathematically, and their fourth reason is that even if the distribution in the original population is far from normal, the distribution of sample means tends to become normal under random sampling as the size of the sample increases. This contradiction between the importance of the normal distribution in statistical theory and its relative infrequency in reality creates a tension, which caused Geary (1947) to emphasize the importance of testing for normality and to recommend that the following warning be printed in bold type in every statistical textbook: "Normality is a myth; there never was, and never will be, a normal distribution" (p. 241). The tension between importance and infrequency caused George Box (1976), R.A. Fisher's son-in-law, to compare the role of the normal distribution in statistics to the general role of the mathematical model in science as a whole thus: In applying mathematics to subjects such as physics or statistics we make tentative assumptions about the real world which we know are false but which we believe may be useful nonetheless. The physicist knows that particles have mass and yet certain results, approximating what really happens, may be derived from the assumption that they do not. Equally, the statistician knows, for example, that in nature there never was a normal distribution, there never was a straight line, yet with normal and linear assumptions, known to be false, he can often derive results which match, to a useful approximation, those found in the real world. p. 792. What Pearson accomplished can be easily deduced from that above. By proving that most reality is not random and additive but causal and multiplicative, he converted the normal distribution from a universal descriptor of reality into a mathematical, mental construct for the distribution of error, against which to test reality. Given that much of reality is multiplicative, whereas error is additive-and the logarithmic transformation converts data from multiplicative to additive-the Galton-McAlister law of the geometric mean, which Pearson rejected as a descriptor of reality due to still being based upon Gaussian axioms, now has an important role as a law of error in statistical tests of significance. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 47973 bytes Desc: image001.png URL: