Ranking Web (Webometrics) of Universities

Sun Sep 9 11:40:33 EDT 2012

Dear Charles,

I did some informal research recently that suggests that there is a 
standard pattern in the ordering of co-authors. The junior people who do 
the actual research come first. The senior people who manage their work 
come last. The instrumentalists who support the work are in the middle. One 
might try to take this into account algorithmically, I suppose. But it is 
certainly the case that the instrumentalists sometimes make major 
contributions to the work, including breakthroughs, so they cannot simply 
be discounted. If your concern is merely that people are being included who 
did nothing significant, that does not seem like a metric issue, more of an 
ethical one.

My Best Regards,

David E. Wojick, Ph.D.

David

At 11:16 AM 9/9/2012, you wrote:
>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
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>
>Dear Isidro, et al. --
>
>Point taken.  However, these are exceptional examples.  I did not mean to 
>impugn the work of crystallographers of such caliber.  I did mean to point 
>out that much of their work is routine.  Moreover, many of the people, not 
>necessarily crystallographers, who make comparatively slight contributions 
>to an article would in the past have been placed in an acknowledgement, 
>not as co-authors.
>
>Acknowledgements are important too, but placing scores of people as 
>co-authors greatly complicates assessing who is responsible for what.
>
>See for example: 
>http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-4571%28199312%2944:10%3C590::AID-ASI5%3E3.0.CO;2-U/abstract
>
>In this paper, Davis (c'est moi) and Cronin point out that acknowledgments 
>follow a power curve, perhaps a factor inducing the placement of people as 
>co-authors in this era of publish and/or perish.
>
>I have no objection to including as co-authors either crystallographers or 
>anyone else who makes a substantive intellectual contribution to a 
>research project and its resulting publication.
>
>Cordially,
>
>Charles H. Davis, Ph.D.
>________________________________
>http://mypage.iu.edu/~davisc/
>
>
>Quoting "Isidro F. Aguillo" <isidro.aguillo at CCHS.CSIC.ES>:
>
>>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>
>>
>>
>>CRYSTALLOGRAPHY AND THE NOBEL PRIZE
>>
>>There have been 12 Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physiology or
>>medicine awarded for work in the field of crystallography from 1956
>>to 2006. Almost one in four chemistry prizes since 1956 have been for
>>structure work, and in the last decade fully half have dealt with
>>work related to macromolecular structure. From 1970 to 2006, 4% of
>>all chemistry publications dealt with crystallography, yet this
>>subfield captured 19% of the available Nobel Prizes. During the past
>>decade, crystallography papers represented 7% of all chemistry
>>publications, but commanded 4 of 10 available prizes. Overall, the
>>Nobel Prizes in chemistry are noticeably enriched for work in
>>macromolecular structure determination. Macromolecular structure
>>determination is a potent tool to understand biological systems and
>>periodically yields landmark results that impact the scientific
>>community at large. It would also seem that the surest road to
>>Stockholm is through a crystal tray. From a letter from Michael
>>Seringhaus and Mark Gerstein, Science, January 2007 (Vol. 315, p. 412)
>>
>>Quoting "Charles H. Davis":
>>
>>>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>>>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>>
>>>Dear all,
>>>
>>>While you chaps argue over the cabalistic esoterica of statistics,
>>>you may be ignoring something of more fundamental importance.
>>>
>>>http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6098/1019.full
>>>
>>>As a chemist, I have long argued against including people such as
>>>x-ray crystallogaphers as co-authors.  They're important, but so are
>>>all high-class technicians.  Whether they contribute to the
>>>intellectual content of an article is debatable.
>>>
>>>Charles H. Davis, Ph.D.
>>>______________________________________________________________
>>>Senior Fellow, Indiana University at Bloomington
>>>Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
>>>http://mypage.iu.edu/~davisc/
>>>
>>>Quoting Loet Leydesdorff <loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET>:
>>>
>>>>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>>>>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>>>
>>>>>But asking for it is not enough, action is needed. For example
>>>>>consider the huge impact of the publication of Shanghai ranking
>>>>>(ARWU) in 2003. Probably we can agree that it is merely high school
>>>>>level bibliometrics, but this is not the important question. In my
>>>>>humble opinion the success of ARWU is probably a illustrating a
>>>>>collective failure of our discipline.
>>>>
>>>>Dear Isidro,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>We are making steps and reaching agreements in the field. For
>>>>example, since Ahlgren et al. (2003) one increasingly began to use
>>>>the cosine as a similarity measure. (Even I have given up on the
>>>>superior Kulback-Leibler divergence, and the cosine is implemented in
>>>>my software.) Similarly since a year or so, one can witness consensus
>>>>about the top-10% most-cited papers as an excellence indicator.
>>>>Granada and Leiden use it in the ranking; you use it, and Lutz and I
>>>>use it in the overlays to Google Maps. We recently had a special
>>>>issue of Scientometrics debating the impact factor as perhaps
>>>>obsolete. Etc.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>We also know much more about how to count and evaluate citation
>>>>distributions over publications. In my opinion, averaging is not such
>>>>a good idea, but adding citation numbers to publication numbers?as
>>>>you seem to advocate (?)?is perhaps even worse.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>In my opinion, one should mistrust any indicator for which no
>>>>uncertainty (error bar) can be specified.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Best wishes,
>>>>
>>>>Loet
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>--
>>Isidro F. Aguillo, HonPhD
>>Cybermetrics Lab (3C1). CCHS - CSIC
>>Albasanz, 26-28. 28037 Madrid. Spain
>>
>>isidro.aguillo @ cchs.csic.es
>>www. webometrics.info