Re: Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:01:26 +0200
From: Jean Kempf <Jean.Kempf -- _at_UNIV-LYON2.FR>
Here's a report on citation statistics written by a statistician
http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/Report/CitationStatistics
A press release that was mailed out today to journalists is at:
http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/PressRelease/2008-06-11/CitationStatistics
It is true that Thomson is misspelled as Thompson, but it is so
consistently. It is also the case that the Leiden stalwarts A.J.F. van
Raan (wide body of work on performance measurement, university ranking
etc.) and H.F. Moed (Book: Citation analysis in research evaluation)
are not cited.
Nevertheless, after reading the report, I would caution against dismissing
it. Science and scientists should be concerned about the politicisation
of metrics. Politicisation comes from governments and research funders
but is also going on inside academic institutions. Moreover, in a
general sense the citation and usage metrics currently available are
not 'fit for purpose'. Worse still, politicisation carries with it the
significant risk of arresting the development of tools for metric research
evaluation. Evaluation is often narrowly defined as assessment and
performance of institutions and indivudals for the purpose of awarding or
denying funding and employment. This is something entirely different from
metric evaluation as research information service to aid scientists in
reducing the complexity of scientific information in their daily research.
All we have at the moment are some 'quick fix metrics'. And these are
increasingly used to make and legitimate all kinds of decisions. It is
thus welcome that mathematicians and statisticians scrutinise current
practices and show up the lack of validity and reliability of many
measures, technical faults as well as the misguided judgements of peers,
university management, funding agencies and government.
My own contribution (working paper) may be found with SSRN: Armbruster,
Chris, "Access, Usage and Citation Metrics: What Function for Digital
Libraries and Repositories in Research Evaluation?" (January 29, 2008).
Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1088453
If the link is broken, please use a search engine *SSRN plus title*
Chris Armbruster
-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of C.Oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk
Sent: Wed 11/06/2008 14:56
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Citation statistics
I haven't had a chance to read the report yet, but I'd be suspicious of any report that fails to spell "Thomson" correctly and fails to cite Ton van Raan, THE expert on the subject.
Charles
Professor Charles Oppenheim
Head
Department of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE11 3TU
Tel 01509-223065
Fax 01509 223053
e mail c.oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On Behalf Of Jean Kempf
Sent: 11 June 2008 12:01
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Citation statistics
Here's a report on citation statistics written by a statistician
http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/Report/CitationStatistics
A press release that was mailed out today to journalists is at:
http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/PressRelease/2008-06-11/CitationStatistics
Received on Wed Jun 11 2008 - 19:02:12 BST