Re: WSJ in impact factor

[David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>]

Within its declared scope, and with its declared limitations as 
described in deail in the database documentation, JCR is an 
accurate summary of the citation data. Note that I said JCR, not 
IF alone. There is much more in JCR than that. and those who do 
not know how to read the detailed tables should start by reading 
the instructions.

Joe, do you mean to say that that ISI measures the citation data 
wrongly (within its known limits) or that citation data are 
irrelevant to quality?

Your very suggestion that universities evaluate their own quality 
is sufficient to show why an umpire is needed. Perhaps it was 
meant as humor.

Dr. David Goodman
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
and formerly
Princeton University Library

dgoodman@liu.edu
dgoodman@princeton.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>
Date: Monday, June 5, 2006 7:00 pm
Subject: WSJ in impact factor
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

> No doubt many of the members of this list will already have 
> seen the article in today's Wall St. Journal on "gaming" the 
> impact factor for science journals.  As the WSJ site requires a 
> subscription, the link is useless, though presumably many on 
> this list have access through institutional subscriptions. 
> The byline is Sharon Begley, the headline is:  Science Journals 
> Artfully Try To Boost Their Rankings.  It is dated June 5 and 
> appears on page B1 of the hardcopy edition (so the online 
> citation says).
>
> The gist of the article is that some journals are trying to 
> increase their citation count in somewhat devious ways, thus 
> improving their impact factor as measured by ISI. I doubt any 
> of this comes as a surprise to anyone but a journalist, who, 
> like FEMA, always get to the action ten years too late.
>
> What should be clear, however, is that impact factors and ISI's 
> unofficial role as umpire for the academy are coming under 
> heavy challenges and may indeed be bankrupt.  New measurements 
> are needed, but of what kind?  I am myself biased toward page 
> views, which speak to readership rather than authorship.  One 
> of the benefits of using page views is that there is a huge 
> Internet industry in the consumer sector that has already built 
> the tools for counting and auditing page views.  I am sure 
> there are other ideas worth considering.
>
> And, yes, this has important implications.  Page views put an 
> emphasis on findability, which means more search engine 
> optimization and less hierarchical Web site architectures. 
> Open Access lends itself to findability--indeed, it is OA's 
> principal merit.  Page views militate against mediating 
> interfaces, whether the portal of a publisher or a library.
>
> Universities "in-source" many things and "out-source" others; 
> the logic behind some of these decisions is not always 
> self-evident. What is truly odd, however, is the outsourcing of 
> the certification process to publishers, whether commercial or 
> not-for-profit, leaving ISI to stand behind home plate and call 
> the balls and strikes.  Someone who wants to transform 
> scholarly communications would start by selecting a new umpire.
>
> Joe Esposito