Re: Measuring citations

[Aline Soules <aline.soules@csueastbay.edu>]

I agree that the pressure comes from the community.  That 
pressure also varies among disciplines.  Business, for example, 
is a major culprit, with the AACSB accreditation process 
ratcheting up pressure further.  As far back as the early 1990s, 
when I was working at a business library in another institution, 
I was asked to provide a ranked list of journals (groups A-D) for 
consideration both by AACSB and by promotion and tenure 
committees.  You can imagine the inequity that would have 
resulted had I agreed to do this, which I did not.

There are occasions when we lay at the vendors' feet the problems 
we create ourselves.

Aline


On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Anthony Watkinson 
<anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com> wrote:

> I would like to make two comments on this topic.
>
> I entirely agree that the work of Bollen and his colleagues is 
> excellent and any presentations from the work worth reading. 
> No-one that I know of thinks that the use of the impact factor 
> for a journal is the best way to judge the true impact of an 
> article in a journal (whatever true impact means). However the 
> impact factor (used in this way) seems to reign supreme and as 
> far as the journal is concerned it is not some conspiracy among 
> publishers that results in the huge pressure to increase or 
> maintain the impact factor for the journals they are 
> responsible for. The pressure comes from the community. The 
> publisher is under pressure (manifested at any editorial board 
> meeting or interaction with a society partner) to do everything 
> they can to improve the IF. Such pressure can certainly (in my 
> experience) get in the way of taking measures to develop the 
> journal so it best serves the longer term interest of the 
> journal as appropriately serving the community in question and 
> the progress of knowledge. Of course the publisher wants to 
> either boast or keep quiet about the journal and its IF - see 
> any journal site.
>
> The second point I want to make is that I think Joe is wrong in 
> implying that publishers invest in copy-editing with the 
> intention to improve impact factors. I have looked back at the 
> blog-posting by Phil and I do not think he says that and 
> certainly his source did not suggest it. I assume it is an 
> assumption by Joe.
>
> I have checked with friends in the industry I am no longer part 
> of and it is a new idea for them. Automated reference checking 
> systems in which they have for some years considerable 
> investment has been made are invested in to facilitate linking 
> so it is usually some other journal that gets the advantage. I 
> suppose you could say that the whole of CrossRef is a 
> conspiracy of publishers (as I know some people do) but I would 
> suggest that the massive impact of linking properly was 
> intended to benefit the academic community.
>
> Of course the side affect was to make most references at the 
> end the article accurate. In the "old days" I recall that at 
> least 20% of references were incorrect in spite of some 
> journals using intensive manual checking even to the extent of 
> visiting libraries!
>
> Anthony
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> On Behalf Of Aline Soules
> Sent: 15 June 2011 00:37
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Measuring citations
>
> Lately, there have been several attempts to clarify the true 
> impact of journals.  MESUR is one such important effort 
> (http://www.mesur.org/MESUR.html).  Johan Bollen spoke about 
> this project at a NISO/BISG meeting at ALA a couple of years 
> ago.  I recommend this effort as worth your consideration.
>
> Aline Soules California State University, East Bay Hayward, CA 
> 94542 aline.soules@csueastbay.edu