From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4712 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: jim stasheff Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Science Citation Index Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:49:26 -0500 Message-ID: Reply-To: jim stasheff NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1241020123 14514 80.91.229.2 (29 Apr 2009 15:48:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:48:43 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: rrosebru@mta.ca Fri Dec 5 09:25:39 2008 -0400 Return-path: Envelope-to: categories-list@mta.ca Delivery-date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:25:39 -0400 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1L8ab9-0002XC-KP for categories-list@mta.ca; Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:19:59 -0400 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 16 Original-Lines: 83 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4712 Archived-At: Michael, at least in the old days, multiauthor papers were listed only once e.g. Milnor and Stasheff only under Milnor jim Barr wrote: > Don't know about Cahiers, but Bob has repeatedly tried to get them to > index TAC and it is like hitting a blank wall. > > The editors of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science have just sent > a very strong letter to the EC which has decided to use the citation > indices (there are apparently more than one) in a formal way. The > American editors seemed to say, that they were used very little for > tenure > or hiring purposes in the US and, to my knowledge (from tenure decisions > at McGill but at least in the early 90s never used by the main granting > agencies. > > But above and beyond that, there was a time when I was actually using the > citation index for its stated purpose. It was when I was starting my > work > on duality and I wanted to know to what extent the Pontrjagin duality had > been extended to classes of topological abelian groups larger than > that of > locally compact groups. Every useful for that, but not if it > gratuitously omits certain journals. > > One of the strongest points made is that the citations often go to > derivative works rather than the original. This is not malice on the > part > of authors; often the derivative source is simply a better, clearer, > whatever, source than the original. > > In a similar way, you cannot judge a mathematician from the number of his > students. Gauss had only 8 students, and four of them, including > three of > the best known (Dedekind, Sopie Germain, and Riemann had exactly none). > But he has, in toto, close to 45,000 descendants, over 70% of whom were > descendants of someone named Christain Gerling, whom I had never heard of > until I just looked it up. My guess is that most of us are descended > from > Gauss (I am). Gustav Herglotz had 1278 descendants nearly all of whom > descend from one student: Emil Artin (my doktorgrandfather). > > My point is that these things are simply not decent measures of value or > influence. The ISI is useful for some things and useless for others, > including making this kind of judgment. That's what people are good at. > > Michael > > > On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, John Baez wrote: > >> Dear category theorists - >> >> Thomson Scientific runs the well-known "Science Citation Index", which >> "provides researchers, administrators, faculty, and students with quick, >> powerful access to the bibliographic and citation information they >> need to >> find relevant, comprehensive research data". I believe data from >> this index >> is used in tenure and promotion decisions at some universities. >> >> I just heard that "Theory and Applications of Categories" and >> "Cahiers" are >> not listed on the Science Citation Index, while - for example - >> Elsevier's >> journal "Homeopathy" is listed there. >> >> Is this true? Is there some way to improve the situation? >> >> Best, >> jb >> >> > >